New Robot Control System!

[Tom Line]

Wow.

I'm always impressed with the level of technical knowledge that First folks have.

However, I sincerely hope that First does not go in many of the directions you guys are suggesting. Linux operating system? Math coprocessors? Different computer langauge? Multi-threading? What percentage of the world uses Linux? What percentage of the world knows how to deal with all the complicated options you guys are talking about?

Right now we have a very "simplistic" system. One that I would venture to guess that 90% of the teams couldn't get a camera, encoders, or potentiometers running without Kevin Watson's code or the appropriate Easy-C pre-coded libraries.

I've done C-Programming since high school 18 years ago. But holy-moly! I can't think of a single person I know (and I work in a manufacturing environment where I spend millions of dollars a year working with contractors) who has a sufficient level of hardware interface knowledge to be able to code things like interrupts etc. This is pretty specialized stuff folks - and it becomes even more so when you move away from a very common langauge to even more exotic options.

I would be very disappointed if First moved in a direction that basically threw out all the work that has been done to date. Our team would end up back in the stone age - turning PWM's on and off would be pretty much all we could do.