My Recipe for building a new beamline control system

Choose a good – detector, hardware, wrapper technology, database, scripting language, high speed network, file + compute server, data reduction program(s)
Implement all basic device servers (motors, detectors,…)
Define + implement fundamental building blocks like move, count, scan, energy, hkl scan
Plug together + switch ON
While (you have a job)
- Do {Debug,Take data, Improve} until (satisfied)
- Write a dedicated application
- Change the hardware + software every 5 to 10 years

Choose a good – detector, hardware, wrapper technology, database, scripting language, high speed network, file + compute server, data reduction program(s)