27 Dec
2022
27 Dec
'22
5:46 p.m.
On 12/27/22 01:02, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
asically: programming on an actual vintage MS-DOS
system is very painful
these days. For starters, the 8.3 filenames and lack of COPY-PASTE.
True, there are some vintage editors that will have a form of copy-paste.
Another issue is some of those old editors are limited to 32KB or 64KB
files (which with comments, sometimes you might get to pretty large files),
and such old editors might not have multi-file support (like having .h and
.c open at the same time). I programmed many years in the "old DOS days"
with 8.3 filenames - reliving that wasn't for me. BUT, it is do-able.
8.3 was luxurious. How about 8 with no period or 6.3 or just trays
I will say this about the old systems--by the time you sat down at the
keypunch or sent your code to the keypunch pool, you had desk-checked
your code carefully because it might be hours before you got to see the
result. It instilled a certain discipline. You want interactive
terminals? How about a TTY? The point is that a good programmer back
in the day had his code written before setting pencil to coding form.
It used to be a joy watching the good veteran programmers sit down at a
keypunch (the work is essentially "blind") without so much as a set of
notes and turn out a complete program module from memory.
To this day, my choice of editor is Joe on Linux--mostly because I need
some program to get things down in bits. I'm not a perfect
touch-typist, as my high-school summer session typing teacher would have
told you. A simple editor works wonders if you've already written the
code in your head. One of the joys of programming low-end MCUs in my
dotage is that I can write code pretty much from scratch.
Modern WYSWYG editors with all of their styles and fonts are more of a
burden to me because I can't simply write things down; they have to look
good also. For example, my idea of a table may not match the canned
version in the editor, so I have to struggle.
Granted, I'm old and should be rummaging around for a couple of pennies
for my eyes. 026s and 407s have long become museum curiosities--and I
suppose that I should join them.
But I had to have my say. Now get off my lawn!
--Chuck
--Chuck