FYI, in my particular case there's no UI. It's all headless RT code targeting a ZYNQ [sb,c]RIO. There's a few TCP loops, some logic for homing motors, some RS232 commands out, a bit of data processing/analysis, etc. I can't go out to a dll because my main roadblock is the run time engine. If I can get the run time engine working then I'll just keep everything as LabVIEW.
Speaking of data flow, do you think some languages are better targets than others? The options I'm considering Java and Python mostly because I want memory management to stay out of my way as much as possible.
Re: black pill. There are many other things I'd prefer to spend my time on.