I am on a highschool robotics team through a program called FIRST (you can take a look at http://www.usfirst.org/ftc). We are currently using a Raspberry Pi with the Raspbian linux as the main brain for our robot. I would like to blow away the Linux, and run the code straight on the Pi, but I am not really sure what I am getting in to. Thus, I have a list of questions I need answered before jumping in and coding anything.
1) What can I run on bare metal? Once I get everything initialized and booted, can I run C or C++ programs which interact with the GPIO pins?
2) If yes, what do I need to do in order to run bare metal code?
I am fairly proficient in C and C++, and am willing to go lower level into assembly and such, but I just haven't done it yet.
Thank you in advance for any and all input and advice.