Quote Originally Posted by Robin Hewitt View Post
You say "etc." before you say "Visual Studio". Windows is event driven and will never guarantee to return control to you in time to step the motors. The moment you give in and add a separate processor to sort out the timing problems MACH becomes a totally redundant unnecessary burden and you may as well run Win8, check your e-mails and have a Shoot'em'up game running in the background to while away the time while it cuts.

I don't think I want to criticize MACH here too much, look what happened to the bloke in the news today, the one who accepted a Gaza appeal to be published in the Jewish Chronicle.
Brilliantly put whilst totally avoiding the perfect opportunity to identify your "personally programmed" alternative where you haven't given up hardware control to Windows. You are signally failing to make a point here.
I'm really intrigued, what system are you using? How much percentage wise and specifically which bits are your own code?
If it turns out that this is an OS bias debate then I'll laugh my socks off as all that really matters is how quick and easy a system is to get running reliably, what the software support is like and what results it produces ;-)