One of the more frustrating things is that you can have a team that reads this article and all agree about the goal but disagree about what is actually boring and safe and worth doing.
There are a lot of people who confuse “boring” with “well-known”, and they’re not the same thing.
Example: you decide to write C++, but the C++ you write looks a lot like C99. You rationalize it as though you’re avoiding the overhead of all that nonsensical modern C++ and doing the simpler and thus more-boring thing. In reality: you’re writing shitty C++.
For the technology you choose, you should buy into it. Full stop. Don’t half-ass it.
Your example is controversial. What if that C99 coding style is company-wide accepted and everyone is comfortable with it. On contrary, newer, more shiny thing, like c++20 is not supported in tools and adds significant mental overhead.
There are a lot of people who confuse “boring” with “well-known”, and they’re not the same thing.
Example: you decide to write C++, but the C++ you write looks a lot like C99. You rationalize it as though you’re avoiding the overhead of all that nonsensical modern C++ and doing the simpler and thus more-boring thing. In reality: you’re writing shitty C++.
For the technology you choose, you should buy into it. Full stop. Don’t half-ass it.