Re: ADTPro beta available

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <44b29462$0$4275$9a6e19ea@news.newshosting.com>,
Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:

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> In article <1152448784.731425.164900@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> schmidtd <schmidtd@my-deja.com> wrote:
>>Paul Schlyter wrote:
>>> Otoh, if you had implemented your ADT for MSDOS or Windows, the
>>> MSDOS/Windows part could be a pain for those that don't already have
>>> MSDOS/Windows (natively, or emulated) installed... :-)
>>
>> There isn't a solution that is pain-free for everyone.  This particular
>> one reduced the pain of development enough for me to take on.  The
>> server would be easy enough to convert back to native MSDOS for those
>> whose tolerance for pain is different than mine. :-)
> 
> How many people are still using DOS at this point?

How many are still using Apple DOS at this point?  ;-)

It's actually amusing that you ask such a question in a forum like this,
which deals with the usage of another obsolete hardware+os combination.
Personally, I believe the number of MS-DOS users is at least as big as
the number of Apple DOS users.  And for the same reason: nostalgia, and
availability of very cheap hardware.

Personally, I use MS-DOS when transferring Apple II disks to/from disk
image files - after having already transferred almost all my Apple II
floppies to disk image files I do that only rarely though.  My old
Apple II resides in my country house, where I also have a few old
MS-DOS computers - in a way, that place is my own "computer museum".
I also use MS-DOS there when reading/writing email/news, through a
dial-up account on a FreeBSD machine.  I can even surf the web with
Lynx on that combination.

So, yes, there are some people still using MS-DOS -- just like there
are some people still using the Apple II .....

> About the only time I boot into DOS (command-line Win98, really) is to
> update a motherboard's BIOS ROM or to make a disk image with Ghost.

You see!  You even have some actual use for MS-DOS!  COuld you say that about
Apple DOS?
 
> Cross-platform is the smart way to go at this point, especially as more
> people start getting fed up with Windows and start looking for alternatives. 
> (My notebook no longer dual-boots Windows and Linux.  It only boots Linux;
> the handful of Windows apps I'm still using work with Wine and/or a Win2K VM
> running under VMware.)

Cross-platform software is indeed nice, but a bit complex.  It requires you to
write the software with portability in mind, and then to actually build it on
multiple platforms to see that it actually works across platforms.

That's not the path chosen by Java though.  Java is single-platform: it runs
only on the Java platform.  It creates an illusion of being cross-platform
by having the Java platform emulated on various other platforms.  But by that
method, you can also make MS-DOS programs "multi-platform".

-- 
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