Thread: how many old school DOS programmers are left?

I think DOS should be used as a teaching OS, just as there are teaching languages. Using 16 bit DOS really makes you appreciate the non-constraint environment of newer 0S's, for crying out loud you have to use far pointers
You have a chance to get down to the nitty gritty in DOS, it also teaches better program flow techniques...you can sort of cheat in windows....then again windows program flow is totally different anyway....but you see what i mean.

You guys think you have it bad off? My school doesn't offer ANY programming of any kind...the best they can do is microsoft apps, and that's not even very good.
http://hiawatha426.k12.il.us/

I'm now studying computer scinces in the university, we learned C++, and we used it to make programs for windows consoles, and we do all our studies in C++, we have one course about Java, and we have assmebly, and some languages for AI, but I don't know about them, because I didn't take that course yet, and we have a course called programming languages, where we are supposed to have an idea about many languages and compare the syntax, and many others things, but I also didn't take that course...

Originally posted by Waldo2k2
I think DOS should be used as a teaching OS, just as there are teaching languages. Using 16 bit DOS really makes you appreciate the non-constraint environment of newer 0S's, for crying out loud you have to use far pointers
You have a chance to get down to the nitty gritty in DOS, it also teaches better program flow techniques...you can sort of cheat in windows....then again windows program flow is totally different anyway....but you see what i mean.

You guys think you have it bad off? My school doesn't offer ANY programming of any kind...the best they can do is microsoft apps, and that's not even very good.
http://hiawatha426.k12.il.us/

lol http://hiawatha426.k12.il.us/menu.html
ive always wanted to know what they were eating in that school
one moment i was even thinking bout changing my menu to the one of the school hmm cheese pizza on friday 7th

Originally posted by GanglyLamb
lol http://hiawatha426.k12.il.us/menu.html
ive always wanted to know what they were eating in that school
one moment i was even thinking bout changing my menu to the one of the school hmm cheese pizza on friday 7th

Isn't that the lamest website ever?? They won't let me do it because the lady who does is scared cause they'll realize they're paying her WAY too much when they see the page i'd make....

anywho, back to DOS and such. Someone said that they weren't sure if DOS would be around in the next 5 years...well, i believe it will, however i think that people will just abandon it. MS has taken it's power away in their NT based platforms. Granted it wasn't that powerful in 9x...but now it can't even talk to hardware...i can't even force reboot my computer with ASM anymore . Unfortuneatly, DOS isn't as slick as *nix, which will be around for YEARS to come....i honestly believe the best operating systems are as follows (major OS's): *nix, DOS, windows.....DOS over windows just for shere ease of use and dependability....i can take DOS and put it on any pc built in the last 15 years and have it working in 2 minutes...not so with windows.

Originally posted by Unregd
DOS is dead, thankfully. Why would you start development in DOS anyway when the Win32 console is superior? You get a full 32-bit protected mode environment with access to all the Win32 stuff you want, and you don't have to worry about near and far pointers and program segments. Learning to program on DOS is learning an irrelevancy. If you need to work with DOS on embedded systems, then the time will come to worry about the limitations of the system AND program design and development.

You're completely missing the point!
The whole point of using an OS with constrictions on it is that you have to learn how to do everything on a lower level. THAT is what makes you a better programmer. Not worrying about near and far pointers makes you lazy and limits your knowledge.

I bet your one of those programmers who do Visual Basic and Java huh?
Anyone can type createWindow()....but would you have even close to the amount of skill and knowledge necessary to create a DOS gui?? I doubt it.
So before you go spouting off about something, think about it first. Just becuase you may think something is outdated or irrelevant and such, doesn't make it so. Any and all machines run by computer are not run by windows, they're run by PLC's. Those are programmed at the bit and hex code level, and you even more limited in that than DOS...so are you saying that the current cutting edge technology is "dead" as well?

Not worrying about near and far pointers makes you lazy and limits your knowledge.

True, but so does not learning a million other things. I doubt near and far pointers are high up on many peoples list, nor imo should they be.

Anyone can type createWindow()....but would you have even close to the amount of skill and knowledge necessary to create a DOS gui?? I doubt it.

Given sufficient time and resources I suspect most people who have a reasonable amount of programming experience could probably have a decent shot at it. DOS may well provide an easier enviroment for learning certain things but I'm not sure why some one would want to use it on a desktop once they'd learnt these things, though.

Just becuase you may think something is outdated or irrelevant and such, doesn't make it so.

Yes, but unfortunately for you; in the realm of desktop computing it's not just Unregd that thinks it's outdated and irrelevant.

>>> but would you have even close to the amount of skill and knowledge necessary to create a DOS gui??

Whatever the pro's and con's are of DOS development, one fact remains, simply, the user requirements of their systems become more and more complicated, and the time scales to prduce these systems becomes shorter and shorter.

I have the ability to create GUI's in DOS, and indeed, in systems that predate DOS by more than a decade. I would choose not too.

Time goes on, systems go on, there will always be people who don't.