Re: PathPilot on NM200
Yes, you see "personality" used in components that have variable inputs, outputs, or internal computations. One of my favorites is 'logic'. That's a logic gate that can have AND,OR, XOR outputs with up to 16 inputs. Those can come in very handy, but you need to have a HEX calculator handy since all that is controlled by a singe HEX value from 'personality'. Very handy to avoid having to fan-out with three 2-input OR gates just to get 4 inputs.
It's abstraction. The name may not make perfect sense in every specific case but by doing that, it does make sense in general terms applied to many different cases.
Think of a program to move a vehicle.
You could have
Car.Roll
Plane.Fly
Boat.Cruise
You have to essentially write most of the same stuff for each vehicle to move from A to B, just with different mechanics and then your functions can only work with one type of vehicle. But if the way you interact with each vehicle is:
Car.Move
Plane.Move
Boat.Move
Then it's the same code to move a Plane as it is a Car. They just each get that done differently behind the scenes.
I digress and hijack, but that's a bit of the "why" behind that.
CNC: Making incorrect parts and breaking stuff, faster and with greater precision.