[BB]: Beta Hardware

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Abrakadabra

<soapbox>

It is amazing to me how some people on this thread are reacting so negatively to change. Not just this year, but even last year, where the benefits of the new control system were even more obvious, it was the same folks making the same complaints. And again, they were generally doing all their griping before all the details were known.

They're not the same complaints (e.g. last year they didn't go "but what if KwikByte makes an inferior DS that dies to static discharge that you have to void your warranty to fix?").

It is even more amazing to me that these people represent teams that have built their reputation on building state-of-the-art, cutting edge robots. Honestly, I really have to wonder how much better these teams might be if they didn't have to deal with so much negativity in their midst.

I think the success of such teams does more to say the benefits of "negativity" (e.g constructive criticism, an incredibly useful tool for any engineering project) rather than "wow the poofs would do so much better without that Negative Nancy!". I mean, if they weren't skeptical and negative, then teams would try to do ridiculous things that would never work because no one criticized them. Criticism is a GOOD thing, if it is constructive.

Hell, without criticism, we'd have the same static death boxes with unreliable pins and Ethernet ports that we do now. And no free laptop in the KoP

Sorry guys, but requiring today's students to have an understanding of assembly language, or knowing how to build their own outboard processor, much less how to cram an image processing algorithm into 4K of RAM, is just not going to cut it anymore. I applaud FIRST for making a such a valiant effort to provide us with the latest technology, and at a reasonable price.

</soapbox>

From an engineering standpoint, if you can get away with a cheaper, more ancient solution then it's inefficient to go with a more expensive one that effectively does the same thing... and I think that's what a lot of IFI fans think, that the current system, while it has its benefits, isn't so much better that it can outdo IFI for FIRST (not to mention basic stuff like reliability, which since you're paying for a product you should complain about when stuff doesn't work).

Sorry for soapboxing as well, but I think to certain extents criticism should be encouraged so that FIRST can make a better product, and your post made it seem like ALL criticism is bad, which is not the right approach.