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
