The project in question is not the problem. Generally when you are writing an "application with gui also parsing xml" in C you will end up developing it in long

The project in question is not the problem. Generally when you are writing an "application with gui also parsing xml" in C you will end up developing it in longer time because of - Memory management - Portability issues - Lack of libraries Because C/C++ allows you to make hard to detect errors easy. And does not usually stop you making stupid errors (such as simple initialization problems, syntax errors etc. because of lack of good IDEs). Maybe a bold claim, but if this would be a challenge, with a well defined problem, many less skilled java-python-ruby programmers would reach to the same level less than half the time.