A system for motion control in which an application is developed that is independent from the actual motion control hardware used to implement the system. A software system employs an application programming interface comprising component functions and a service provider interface comprising driver functions. Code associated with the component functions relates these functions to the driver functions. Driver functions are separated into core and extended driver functions. All software drivers implement the core driver functions, and optionally implement the extended driver functions. Extended driver functionality may be obtained through a combination of core driver functions.