On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 6:06 PM, Gene Wirchenko <[email protected]> wrote:
>> You complained that a 1990's 16-bit utility built to run on DOS won't >> run in the latest 64-bit OS that includes a 32-bit emulator to run >> Windows-on-Windows for 15-year-backward compatibility. The CMD shell >> may look a lot like DOS, but it is not COMMAND.COM. DOS was built with >> a lot of assumptions that it owned the entire machine (all 640k!) and >> could do whatever it wanted, something you can't do in a >> cooperatively-multitasking machine with gigabytes of RAM and 2,4,8 or >> more CPUs/threads. If you want to run DOS, you ought to run DOS, >> either in a VM or an emulator. Windows hasn't run under DOS since >> Windows 98 (okay, WinME, but no one used that), so it's time to run >> DOS differently. > > > IBM has managed to have long-time compatibility on their mainframes. > Compatibility can be done if one has the will to do so. Microsoft does not. > Well, first off, OS/360 was a pretty good system, not their first. And their customers have HUGE applications written in it and the follow-on OSes that are nigh-on impossible to re-write/port: source is gone, coders, too. So, the paying customers demand, and pay for, that compatibility. In contrast, Microsoft bought a bad CP/M clone from Sierra Systems, ripped off Apple, Quarterdeck and GEM for a UI, and shipped a sloppy single-user PC GUI who's first edition didn't even support networking. (I coded some of my first Fox apps on a PS/2 50Z with Token Ring networking that took a dozen-person IT department to keep running.) In follow-on versions, they "innovated," supported, then obsoleted disk space compression, EMS, EMM386.SYS, CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, LANtastic, 10Base-T, 25-pin serial ports, PS/2 ports, parallel ports, 5 1/4" floppies, Bernoulli drives, NetBEUI, LAN Manager, OS/2 (RIP), NTFS 1.0, FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,... man, the list is endless, but most of it has a distinct smell of "throw it against the wall and see what sticks." > I think there was a downside for them, but maybe/probably not a big > enough one. Microsoft has, over the years, trained me to expect to be > ill-treated. Now that there are viable alternatives, I need approximately > one more break to kick the Microsoft habit. Once gone, I will likely be > gone for good. That was pretty much my conclusion in the 1998-2002 era. I had two issues with MS where a slipstreamed "update" or "security patch" blew away working production code for major clients, costing me dearly. Finally in 2002, I spent a week in Redmond previewing their upcoming DotNet product line and I could clearly visualize the decade of mistakes, mis-steps and turmoil they were going to put their customer base through. Sadly, most of what I saw came to pass. My last major VFP project was in 2003. My first major LAMP project started in 2005. While we continue to support some legacy VFP apps a decade later, and I've even released a new product partially based on VFP this year, most of my efforts are spent in other pursuits. It's not that VFP isn't up to the task, it is. It is that the sole vendor of the product has restricted its use to one OS and stopped providing updates to the product. There are worthy alternatives out there for programming languages, database engines and GUI tools, though none with the all-in-one package that VFP provides. So, we move on... -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/cacw6n4slf91pcp9e-wws2e2wn2ufhprut4b-ugmbbgjw2ze...@mail.gmail.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
