[Oblarg]

LabView is easier to learn for students with no programming knowledge and has some nifty features (e.g. automatic multithreading). It also takes forever to upload code (supposedly this will be improved on the roboRIO), is limited in applicability to other fields, and will not give students any significant programming knowledge that can be transferred to other languages.

Java is very widely used, not overwhelmingly difficult to learn, uploads easily, and is similar enough to most other C-based languages that students who learn to program the robot in Java will have a nice head-start if they ever intend to pursue programming. Unfortunately, the FRC Java API is frustratingly bad/poorly-documented, and programming the robot as anything other than a finite state machine is somewhat complicated.

Which is "better" depends critically on the utility function you're using to compare them.