how many old school DOS programmers are left?

I've been noticing that from the time that i registered here, to now, there's been a HUGE drop off in the number of posts on the DOS board. And frankly I'm both frightened and dissappointed, I love DOS to death, and I always write every program in DOS before porting it to windows just for the ease of getting something working.

I just wanted to know how many old school DOS geeks we had left here, go ahead and drop me a line....maybe discuss what you think is happening with the lack of DOS programmers coming out of the chute.

I used to program a lot in DOS, mainly because it was easy working, you could do a lot in DOS. Currently I have a Windows system running and use it also to develop programs, most of them are Windows console applications.

I know just a little about Windows programming, I have learned using MFC and Windows API functions to create simple applications, it is not the way of programming that I prefer. I prefer doing low level programming, also made it my job.

A lot of beginning programmers have a Windows system and probably don't even know how a real DOS system would look like. They grow up with Windows systems.

BTW, I also noted that the number of postings on the C-board has decreased the last half year (?). In the beginning when I started here.

I grew up with DOS, Windows those days as still very slow an
ugly. Anyone can program in DOS, Since QuickBasic is DOS and
who can't program BASIC?

Blame Win XP/2k. They don't fully support DOS so programming for that platform is a waste nowadays.

I think a DOS designed program converted to Windows suffers, because it does not use a lot of the sophisticated features available in a modern OS.

Multitasking, multithreaded systems, and in particular device independent features - easy in Windows, avoided in DOS.

I've been programming longer than a lot of you, and hell, there is no way I'd use DOS if I had a decent Win32 development system around.

Surely it can be no suprise that the DOS and C boards get less posts these days? They are increasingly legacy technology, and the majority of questioners are youngsters taught in todays environments.

> taught in todays environments.

Which is why I think it's odd that so many schools still teach old stuff. Until about 5 years ago, my high school still taught Pascal as its only programming language. Until about 3 years ago, my university taught FORTRAN. For some reason, my university doesn't teach C++, except (and this isn't for sure) in high level CS classes. It's C everywhere, except in the beginning classes, where it's Java.

My school teaches PASCAL and VB. Urgh.

Govtcheez, wot high school did u go to?

Grand Ledge High School

It's craptacular!

About 6 years ago I started at university, we learned programming with Pascal for one year on a DOS system. The next year we turned to C programming. In the last two years we got C++. Currently, the students start learning Java on Windows machines.

At my company we had a few computer science students working on a project their study at university. They knew Java and just a little C++.

I noticed that electrical engineering students get much more programming now, than in the days I started with electrical engineering study. I also noticed computer science studies have removed a lot of low level programming from their study-programs and a lot of low level programming is currently taught at electrical engineering studies. Funny to see how software development is spreading across the studies.

[edit]
Note that this is the situation in the Netherlands.
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>>> Until about 3 years ago, my university taught FORTRAN.

Nothing wrong with that, as long as you are pursuing a science course , with some IT. The majority of true scientists I know use Fortran daily as their first language - it is much more flexible when it comes to processing mathematics - it is, after all, what it was designed to do - FORmularTRANslator.

These days, I would not advocate learning Fortran in an IT based degree with little hard science, it's too specialised.

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Originally posted by Govtcheez
Grand Ledge High School

It's craptacular!

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Didn't know you were American. Always thought you were cornish. LOL

I still program alot for DOS, even though Im doing win32 now too.

>>Until about 5 years ago, my high school still taught Pascal as its only programming language.

you think thats bad at my vocational school (i just graduated last year) they taught COBOL as a freaking language...the school was like, we pride ourselves on cutting edge technology, my teacher told me that if i wanted it to change i had to persuade the freaking board of directiors to get them to teach c++ as part of the curriculum. anyway, about dos, xp is trying to ax the whole dos thing, so its kinda hard for people to get into it ya know, cuz who knows if it'll be around in 10 years?

> Nothing wrong with that, as long as you are pursuing a science course , with some IT.

I'm pretty sure it was just in the CS program somewhere. ober could back me up when he gets around, since he's a year older than me.

> LOL

Heh, I can't believe you looked around that site so much. Actually, about 2-3 months ago, that site wasn't so... ahem... flamboyant...

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 :eek:
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...

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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 :eek:
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/

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

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

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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.

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.

I only program DOS on my old DOS box in my room. If somebody is on the new computer and I'm bored I just go in my room and program crap on the DOS computer. I've been getting into 0x5D graphics.

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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.

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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?:rolleyes:
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?

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.