We're an Alpha team (now Beta), and can probably help out a bit.
1. My team usually just uses print statements and looks at the logs as the robot runs. This works especially well when you first load code from Eclipse, as it prints everything right to the console as the robot runs.
2. What you're looking for is WPIlib. That's what all C++ teams (WPIlibj for Java teams) have for their starting framework. It has simple robot, iterative robot, and command based robot systems starting points. When you first create your project in eclipse, you pick which one you want and the project gets built with all the default files in place - all you have to do is open them up and fill in the functions! Obviously, sometimes it can be useful to create additional classes as you go
3. I'm not entirely sure... maybe this is just a reference to the built-in project creation modules in eclipse? Creating a project worked almost identically as it used to.
4. Honestly, we've never worried about loop timings. We've used the command-based project for a few years now, and it all just takes care of itself.
5. We're a java team, although we do have a C++ version of our robot code from Alpha testing - Java wasn't quite ready when we got started last fall, and we wanted to get something running!
6. Auto can be as simple or complex as you'd like - it's just like programming teleop, except now the values you send the controllers are hard-coded, not coming from joysticks.
7. There is a vision library for C++, and for Java as well. your best bet is to just play around with it and see how it works!
8. you can do data logging the same as you did in labview, it isn't really all that difficult. C++ has native file IO libraries that'll let you create, read, and write to files.
If you have questions our programming team can help with, please let them know through e-mail! 2177 (at) therobettes.com