I first encountered DOS in 1984 when I used Wordperfect to edit COBOL
programs at college. Prior to that, I had already been working on
minicomputers (what some might mistakenly call mainframes) for a few
years (and still do). I then owned a Sinclair ZX81, then a Color
Computer 2, before I got my first IBM PC compatible in 1989. When
trying to learn how to use desktop computers, I remember thinking that
the 'desktop computer paradigm' might be easier to learn for those who
had *not* already been using mainframes or minicomputers. I think it
had something to do with the fact that mainframes are a
'transaction-based' environment. In other words, most mainframe
programs read, write, or change discrete records in a file. On desktop
computers, however, I thought it was strange to start Lotus, or a word
processor, and then load a whole file to change discrete records, and
then remember to 'Save' the file when I was finished with it. That,
at first, seemed awkward to me. That's why it occured to me that
desktop computers might have been easier for me to learn if I had not
already had experience with mainframes and minicomputers.
BTW, when I got active on Compuserve, and BBS's, in 1989, or so, I got
frustrated when communicating with people who would talk about 'PC's,
when what they really meant was 'desktop computers'. There *was* a
difference in my mind. "PC" was really, I thought for a while, a
trademark, or at least a designation that should only be used for the
IBM version of the desktop computer. All the other desktop computers,
like Atari, Coco, Commodore, TRS-80, Mac, etc. should only be referred
to as 'desktop computers', *not* as PC's.
Now, of course, the term 'PC' is used as a generic term for desktop
computers, but I still prefer my way of thinking.
I just remembered something. I used an IBM (pre-MS-DOS PC) desktop
computer briefly in 1979 or so. I believe it was called the 'Desktop
64', or something. It only had a couple floppy drives, no hard drive.
When I wrote my first PC-compatible shareware program, in 1990, it
uses a 'mainframe' paradigm. I.E., when the user enters, changes or
deletes records, it just operates on one record at a time. In other
words, they don't load a whole file first, then save it when
finished. In reality, since most desktop computers (and mainframes,
I presume) use buffers, the program really changes records in the
buffer, and then the OS reads or writes them to/from the HD in groups,
transparently to my program. I remember my first users being confused
that the program didn't ask them to 'Save' the file when they exited
the program. Because of the presence of the buffers, the 'Loading',
'Changing', then 'Saving' a whole file still seems redundant to me,
since, in many cases, the whole file then probably exists in 2 places
in the PC's memory.
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