New Robot Control System!

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

but that said, I can't imagine that Microsoft has committed a corporate sin any worse than many of FIRST's other major sponsors

I'm not so sure about that. Microsoft has been convicted for illegally abusing their monopoly in the US and European Union. They lied in court and were even caught red-handed forging video evidence to back up the lie. I'm sure many of FIRST's corporate sponsors have skeletons in their closets too, but these are some pretty serious "sins" from Microsoft.

Personally, I dislike them because I feel Microsoft is largely responsible for the opinion held by many in the world that software which malfunctions, crashes, doesn't do what it's supposed to, etc. is acceptable. I know many, many other companies contribute to this problem as well, but they're really the ones who convinced the public that this is OK. I don't think any other engineering discipline would tolerate the shoddiness that is often considered acceptable and standard practice in software engineering today. I actually had someone say to me once, "Office crashes on me a few times a week, so why should our product have to be any better than that?" That really ticked me off as an engineer.