After reading many of the replies here, I think that there are really two angles that people have on this subject:
1) People who are non-programmers like the idea of a graphical programming environment.
And,
2) People who are programmers hate the idea of a graphical programming environment.
Since it seems that these two 'parties' can't be good bedfellows... I guess the solution is to remain with a controller that offers both graphical and textual programming options.
NI is beginning to realize this as well... as time goes on NI is allowing more and more of their hardware and software to be programmed through C/VB/etc... case in point...
LabWindows/CVI can usually be used on NI hardware and software anywhere LabVIEW can go... there are still places where only LabVIEW can be used to write code but those places are decreasing.
Really where I see a ton of potential is in the awesome hardware NI has to offer.... it would be awesome to have an NI
compact vision system on your robot! Just think... tracking at up to 100 frames per second! Not to mention full color processing and multi-object tracking... wow.... to have that for autonomous... could have found ringers in autonomous this year!
Wow i really hope we get some discounts from NI this year... imagine the possibilities!
-q