Labview vs visual basic vs visual C

Hi,
I am hoping to get advice about LabVIEW vs Visual Basic/C for developing education software. I have programmed in LabVIEW for test and measurement applications.
I have also programmed a couple of short programs in C, but have never programmed in Visual C or Visual basic. I want to develop software for educational purposes for
students with special needs such as spelling and reading comprehension programs. These programs would involve a lot of displaying text, graphics and
sounds to the students and measuring student inputs via text or clicks on buttons to determine whether they need additional help from the computer to learn the lessons.
I was was wondering if anyone has the knowledge to advise using LabVIEW vs Visual C vs Visual Basicfor such programming tasks?
I am guessing that Visual C and Visual Basic may have more flexibility in displaying text, graphics, sounds etc. since this is mostly what they used for. On the other hand,
I am famliar with the ease of coding in LabVIEW for test/measurement applications but wondering if there might be limitations or difficulties in programming with LabVIEW
for a more general purpose windows application such as the education software I am planning. I would have to learn Visual C or Visual Basic, but if those environments
would be easier or better in the long run, then I will be better starting off with one of them then getting down the road with labVIEW and changing directions. Any advice will
be welcomed. Thanks!
Dave Adams

Hi Adam,
I suspect I will get a lot of crap from the LabVIEW community here for saying this, but if you have the time to learn VB .NET, I think you will find that it makes things much easier in the long run for applications that involve a lot of user interface design. In my experience, I have found that there is little that cannot be done in LabVIEW - it is more a matter of elegance. Software like you are describing is best implemented using an event-driven approach. VB .NET (as well as the older versions of VB, and C#) make this type of design pattern extremely easy to implement. With the .NET framework libraries available to you, virtually any type of user interface control that you would need is available to use and the documentation provided on MSDN blows LabVIEW documentation out of the water.
One caveat: if you expect to be running this software on other platforms other than Windows, .NET may not be the right choice. (There are .NET runtimes available on some other platforms (like Mono for Linux), but you would wind up needing to modify a lot of the user-interface code and a lot of the framework features in general are in beta.)
Also, the express version of Visual Studio is free and there are really no limitations to the express edition that would matter for writing a simple Windows application like you are describing. Note that a fairly convincing argument can be made for why Visual Studio is THE best IDE on the market right now.
On the other hand, using a tool you are familiar with has its benefits. Nevertheless, I have never met a software engineer that could not learn VB .NET, who could somehow still write decent LabVIEW code. LabVIEW is easier to use only for people without a software background - and those are the same people who really shouldn't be writing software (as evidenced by the hundreds of pitiful LabVIEW VIs that I'm exposed to on a daily basis).
Anyway, I hope this helps,
Rob

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What replaced the LOAD command in Visual Basic 6?

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Frank,
[snip]
I'm sure it can be done, but how can I learn without coming back to this forum with every little question?
[snip]
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'the new .NET manual is online now:
' - go to https://google.com
' - type 'msdn [keyword]' (i.e: 'msdn list')
' - the first result is almost what is desired
' - if not enough information is given that is what the forumns are for!
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Create a new Windows Form project and paste this, press play.
Enjoy.
EDIT:
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If your project is not secure or personal you can copy it to your online cloud OneDrive and I can download the whole thing from there - let me know.

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Message Edited by Marc A on 10-03-2007 03:56 PM
Attachments:
Example_BD.png ‏2 KB

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