How can I convince my boss that ANSI C is inadequate for our new project?
- by justifiably cowardly
A few months ago, we started developing an app to control an in-house developed test equipment and record a set of measurements. It should have a simple UI, and would likely require threads due to the continuous recording that must take place. This application will be used for a few years, and shall be maintained by a number of computer science students during this period.
Our boss graduated some 30 years ago (not to be taken as an offense; I have more than half that time on my back too) and has mandated that we develop this application in ANSI C. The rationale is that he is the only one that will be around the entire time, and therefore he must be able to understand what we are doing. He also ruled that we should use no abstract data types; he even gave us a list with the name of the global variables (sigh) he wants us to use.
I actually tried that approach for a while, but it was really slowing me down to make sure that all pointer operations were safe and all strings had the correct size. Additionally, the number of lines of code that actually related to the problem in hand was a only small fraction of our code base. After a few days, I scrapped the entire thing and started anew using C#. Our boss has already seen the program running and he likes the way it works, but he doesn't know that it's written in another language.
Next week the two of us will meet to go over the source code, so that he "will know how to maintain it". I am sort of scared, and I would like to hear from you guys what arguments I could use to support my decision.
Cowardly yours,
