First things first: why?

So, with all of that having been said, why am I writing an image processing application in C#? Because my advisor/boss told me to, in order to match with existing code. The story goes like this:

Once upon a time, there was a lone coder who worked at a company that made x-ray devices. This coder was constantly having the patch the system to account for all kinds of strange bugs, and he would find the patches in various Microsoft libraries. So, in order to keep himself current on all the new technologies and to fix these bugs, whenever Microsoft released a new library, he would add it into the application. He then left the company, his code a Jenga-tower filled with holes and teetering to collapse, a fine structure that only he could understand.

The code, when synced from source control, weighed in a hefty 2 gb. It may be one of the few times I've seen source code larger than the executable (150mb).

Into this I came, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, to write some image processing code for my PhD thesis in Biomedical Engineering. By working directly for this company, I get direct access to the bits. I can plug an oscilloscope up to the x-ray machine if I wanted to (or if it would help, which it wouldn't) to be able to get real numbers. Just try doing that with a Fuji or Kodak CR machine-- just try. They lock that stuff down so hard, and you have no idea where those numbers came from or what processing has been done on them before. This way, I can know exactly what's been going on to the numbers before they form an image on my screen.

The downside, of course, is that I have to mesh with this Jenga code.

So, I've been learning C# in order to write an image processing application. And currently, once I've learned a bit about it, it's not that bad a language to write for. It really isn't. It's got some real annoyances, and until I read a book on it, my code was as weak as a newborn kitten (but not as cute). It does have some serious drawbacks, though, and these are the things I've learned to get around in order to make this application work.

Who knows-- maybe someday, I'll get to post that application. We'll see if the boss lets me; I know that more eyes will make it suck way less than it does now.

mmr