**FIRST EMAIL**/Invitation to Beta test the New Control System

[Kevin Sevcik]

If you've read through this thread and you're still skeptical about the ultimate benefit to giving beta units to select veteran teams, I have one simple argument.

For the past several years, CD and the FRC community have benefited from the programming and electrical expertise of the likes of Kevin Watson, Alan Anderson, Don Rotolo, dcbrown, Al Skierkiewicz, and numerous others. We've had Kevin's massively useful codebase and many intro programming seminars for rookies, in addition to all the tech support on CD.

Now picture how well things are going to go if all of our expert help suddenly disappears at the exact moment we have a huge paradigm shift in our control system. Everyone getting the control system at the same time means that suddenly no one is an expert. And no one has anywhere to turn for help. The veteran teams with very talented programming help will catch on quick enough, but rookies and less experienced teams are going to be left with no clue what's going on and no where to turn for help, as our experts are going to be far too busy playing catchup themselves to be nearly as effective as they are now. They'll certainly try, but on the whole, I think it makes a lot more sense to rebuild our grassroots support that's worked so well for us in the past, in stead of deliberately shooting ourselves in the foot in the name of complete fairness and equity.

Also, did anyone else notice that the email didn't mention anything about the C++ interface or whether or not a team will be using that over Labview? If you have two teams in an area, and one's dedicated to C++ and another to Labview, I think it makes perfect sense to let both teams into the program. But I didn't see any mention of it...