I wouldn't sell NI + LabVIEW short with respect to programming lower-end microcontrollers.
http://www.ni.com/embedded/
The tools might be a bit pricey and still somewhat immature but I can envision a time when > 90% of programmers will be using graphical tools (eg LabVIEW, Simulink, UML, etc) and < 10% of programmers will be doing low-level work in a text-based language.
Anyone still using punch cards and assembly language out there? Those were great tools for their time and are still critical in a number of applications. However, I'm sure that C/C++ is WAY more common now even though assembly language dominated the embedded world until relatively recently.
Will the graphical tools create code that is as efficient as hand-crafted assembly or C? Never. Will continued time-to-market pressure force engineers to find faster ways to develop their code? You bet.
Russ