cRIO: Traditional or LabVIEW?

[Spartan151]

Hey guys. I've been following this stuff about the new control system and I have a couple questions, mainly pertaining to the programming aspects of it. Now, I may have overlooked something simple in reading about the document, but here's what I would like to know.
Since our team is small, and lost our chief programmer to graduation, is it still possible to use MPLab in any way (Mainly, I mean the C programming codes of old.)?

Or will we have to learn to use labVIEW, which none of us know how to use?

A subquestion of the one above: what is the best way to learn how to operate labVIEW?

(I'm having to reteach myself the old C+ codes that we used last year to get a hold on the concept so i can teach it to the new programmers, but I don't want to go too far and then have to dramatically shift gears)