Re: DOS, was Re: Ada Tutor Web Site Shutting Down

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 5/13/11 10:32 PM, Rugxulo wrote:

> Well, my point is this: if people survived 20-30 years ago with much,
> much less, why can't we (today)??? I don't think DOS is perfect, but I
> do think its software should be preserved, and compatibility to
> actually run it (or other OS binaries) would be nice, esp. without
> needing literally billions of bytes of RAM.

Preservation and compatibility is where standards will help.
In the long run, they lead to more portable programs.

Alas, the belief system of entrepreneurs includes the golden  rule
that in the long run we (the rational actors) are all dead.   I.e.,
our co-entrepreneurs have sold something to customers before
we could.  Therefore, we must produce the fastest,
cheapest programs, and quickly. Hence, software either relies on OS's
bells and whistles, or uses clunky libraries or frameworks,
is written duct tape style, drops abstraction,
and cannot easily be adapted to a new operating systems.
Am I wrong?   At least as regards NGOs' software production?

In the long run, it does seem possible to recompile SNOBOL-4 programs,
Scheme programs, or Ada programs, even some C programs without making
many changes.  If many changes mostly concern presentational
style of user I/O, not desired "computational" functions (if there is
one besides making an audiovisual impression) we should have
abstractions for the functions in the design of programs. Then, DOS
or gLitzOS is just a choice.

I guess that, given an Algol compiler, we might simply feed it a
50 years old program and run the executable.  I cannot suppose
that Cobol programs reflecting much domain knowledge are  dropped,
or even gradually replaced.  In fact, the Microfocus compilers will
produce Java byte code, no need to make old programs run on virtual
machines that execute Cobol byte code.
(I think the banks are using VMs for some VMS programs, at least
until these will have been completely ported to contemporary
platforms.)

What is the fraction of DOS programs that you could just
recompile?

Since we cannot hope that time-to-market gets lower
priority, and since both appearance and price do matter,
application programmers can't survive the way normal
application programmers did 20-30 years ago.

Unless retro style changes the situation :-)



>> Extending the set of examples of how people rolled their own,
>> -  Minix is a more elaborate OS for the IBM PC (with Intel 8088),
>> -  Coherent OS is, too.
>
> Did they exist in 1982??

AFAICT, Coherent was ported to 8088 in 1983.
Minix came later, the book being published in 1987.

> It's not that there is no progress, just it has good and bad qualities
> and takes a long time. It's just one of my pet peeves that everything
> old is automatically "good for nothing". For some reason, only the
> latest/greatest is approved ... until it becomes old hat, then it's
> tossed aside like garbage, even when it works!

There was a time when DOS on an IBM PC was considered the latest/greatest.
So was Ada.   Frankly, I'd rather have Ada preserved than DOS.