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From: hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at (Peter Holzer)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: How wrong is MS-DOS? (or: What is the definition of obsolete)
Message-ID: <2235@tuvie.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jan 91 19:05:34 GMT
References: <1991Jan6.183213.27136@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1991Jan06.204401.21579@turnkey.tcc.com> <1991Jan6.232549.2764@isis.cs.du.edu> <1991Jan08.040128.22819@cs.fau.edu> <339@bria> <3111@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
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davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes:

>In article <339@bria> mike@bria.UUCP (Michael Stefanik) writes:

>| So was DOS in 1981.  Because DOS is the status quo, that doesn't mean
>| you accept it.  The point is *move forward* - convenience has no place
>| with progression.  If MS-DOS users were representative of Mankind,
>| we'd be living in caves waiting for it to lightning so we could get some
>| fire ...

>  No, we'd have colonies on the moon and Mars. DOS users are the ones
>who use the computer as a tool, not a way of life. They can edit some
>files, produce a few spreadsheets, do their taxes, and maybe play a game

DOS users also are the people who are constantly amazed what
their computer can do if you have the right tools and know how
to use them. Lots of them don't even know the /S option of
xcopy.

>or two. They go on to solve useful (read as money making) problems with
>their little computers, and don't think about upgrading until they have
>a problem they can't solve with the existing resources.

They don't think about upgrading? 

A DOS-User: "Now I have MS-DOS 5.0"
Me: "Interesting. What has been improved since 4.0?"
DOS-User: "I don't know, but it is 5.0!"

Conversations like the above are constantly going on. DOS-Users
constantly want the newest version of each program they use
(even if they use PC-Tools only to format their floppies).
Admittedly I am talking about Users who don't buy their
programs, but the story stays the same.

>  The people who are content with DOS don't see as anything but a way to
>do a job. They solve problems with existing resources instead of
>worrying about new ones. They are the people who put Skylab up several
>decades ago. The scientists who now say that we can't put up a space
>station because it will need constant repairs don't use DOS. They never
>get anything done because they are always sharpening their tools.

>| technoignorami (tek'no-ig'no-ram`i) a group of individuals that are constantly
>| found to be saying things like "Well, it works on my DOS machine ..."

>  As opposed to people who write income tax programs in Emacs macros,
>and keep saying things like "I don't need support, I have the source.
>Given a few days I can add the feature."

More often DOS-Programmers (not general Users) say: "I don't
have support, I just have to wait for the next release or find
someone to write a program that does this." Even if you have
support, nobody is going to add those features that aren't there
over the phone. I am living in a dorm and of the 15 people
owning a computer 3 are CS students (including me). The other
people are constantly asking me to fix bugs in, add features to, etc.
DOS-programs, what I just can't do without source (Ok, I can
patch checks for DOS version or computer type or some hard-coded
filenames, but anything beyond that is damned hard with only an
EXE-File and sdb). If I had the source, however I could fix it
(The only question is if the problem is serious enough to dig
into 11MB source of emacs :-)

>  DOS doesn't fit my usage, but for typical business applications it
>works just fine.

Agreed.
--
|    _  | Peter J. Holzer                       | Think of it   |
| |_|_) | Technical University Vienna           | as evolution  |
| | |   | Dept. for Real-Time Systems           | in action!    |
| __/   | hp@vmars.tuwien.ac.at                 |     Tony Rand |