Ok, I've been 10 years in it as well, if that's important. There's simply no reason to skip ROS as a student. My advice was not for businesses, whatsoever. And

Ok, I've been 10 years in it as well, if that's important. There's simply no reason to skip ROS as a student. My advice was not for businesses, whatsoever. And every single ROS replacement I've seen is ROS-like enough that the language ROS defined for all of us is effectively lingua franca. But the antibodies that are triggered by even mentioning ROS should tell anyone how much it is not a fun thing to learn or work with. But it is a common touchpoint. It's really hard to understand _nearly any_ design decision in robotics software without first understanding why it isn't ROS.