[Orthofort]

Coming from a team that just switched to Java from LabVIEW, I have experience using both with FRC.

I will flat out say that in your situation, I recommend using LabVIEW. It is, as everyone else has said, far better for those with less experience in programming, and along the same token, there is a lot larger of a support network for LabVIEW for FRC specific support, and in my opinion LabVIEW is better at helping you itself, and the FRC code is much better documented under LabVIEW than Java or C++.

Our team specifically switched to Java because we tend to get more people with experience in programming Java because of our school district, and it worked better for us. The decision should always be made holistically to your specific team, but from what you're saying, I would recommend LabVIEW.

In addition to what everyone else has said, I'd like to add the personal note that if you get a programmer who does have decent experience with a text-based language, it can be difficult bordering on infuriating to switch to LabVIEW, a big reason why we switched. Java and C++ are probably also more applicable to the 'real world' past FRC, but there are jobs out there that do use LabVIEW. We've even had a mentor that used LabVIEW extensively in his job.

One thing I haven't seen others say that I think is a big factor that you might want to consider is that Java and C++ can now utilize RobotBuilder, which is extremely helpful for getting a skeleton of your code, and getting a project started without actually writing anything. You can do a lot of stuff with their command structure that makes it pretty easy to get a working project.