Any drawback using LabVIEW to develop educational programs?

[Dave Adams]

I would like to write some educational programs for my
son and also make an augmentative communication device out of pocket pc. An example of an educational program would be a spelling program that I can input
specific words to work on and have the program provide a visual prompt of the whole word, then fade out one letter at a time if the word is typed correctly. The augmentative communication device would have pictures that if selected would play audio files.

These applications seem pretty straight forward. I
was first thinking of using visual C++. I have about
a years worth of experience using LabVIEW 4.0 so there
shouldn't be much of a learning curve for me to get
back up to speed using t
he latest version of LabVIEW.
I don't know C++ or the specifics of PDA programming
but am guessing the PDA module would streamline the
process of coding for a pocket pc. Just curious if anyone has thought about using LabVIEW for anything
similar or "off-task" from it's usual uses. Also, would there be any reasons for me to go through the
learning curve of C++, Visual software development,
embedded PDA programming, etc. instead of using LabVIEW? Back when I was using LabVIEW 4, I think the compiled LabVIEW programs ran at signficant percentage (50-70%?) of a compile C program. Is this still the case? Thanks

[BEWIN]

I have programmed myself in Visual Basic,Java, Pascal,4GL,Modula 2, C++, Python, en now more recently also in Labview. To my opinion, if you have never programmed in other language besides Labview, the learning curve to a languages like C++ will be rather steep. Even with knowledge of C++ you will spend more time in producing code in C++ then making your program with Labview. For the things you want to make I don't see why you could not use Labview. Also I think performance is not an issue for your applications.

[Dave Adams]

Thanks for the response. I have programmed in C but not extensively. I read some forum members who have programmed on other languages comment on the ease of use of LabVIEW and how much they like the language.
My only concern is whether LabVIEW has a lot of flexibliy in how the GUI can look. There are probably going to be particular ways in which I want to display pictures and text and wonder if LabVIEW would be significantly limiting in this area compared to visual C++? Anything that LabVIEW couldn't do, I am thinking I can use a code interface node (not sure if this is still called the same thing) for. In my applications, I may not need anything more than LabVIEW already has.

[BEWIN]

General purpose languages like C++ and Java have more flexibility concerning GUI design or for working with picture and drawings.But also labview provides different vi's for pictures and drawings, see picture function vi's. Maybe a good approach is first to define first exactly what you want to do and carry out some small test with Labview to see if it could be done.