Re: [OT] How far have we come?
Irv,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Irv Mullins" <irvm at ellijay.com>
To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com>
Subject: [OT] How far have we come?
> I have been looking at several dozen Pascal programs I wrote ~20 years ago
for
> a friend, who still uses them daily in his business. The idea, of course,
was
> to convert these to Windows programs, both to be "modern" and to be sure
they
> would run on the next version(s) of Windows, in case Bill. G. actually
drops DOS
> support.
>
> My problem: I can't for the life of me see any way they can be improved by
> using Windows. They run faster on a 286 with 640k than similar Windows
> programs do on a 350Mhz 128meg. system. The "user interface" is quicker
> and easier that it would be on Windows. And DOS seldom crashes.
>
> I'm not really asking for advice (it's welcome nevertheless)
> Mainly I'm just wondering if we've really gained anything, other than
> headaches from trying to deal with the Windows API, and smaller bank
accounts
> from continually fortifying our pc's to deal with the ever-increasing
demands?
>
> Regards,
> Irv
Excuse me, but do I detect a little shade of guilt? Your analysis is quite
correct: almost any more or less well written old DOS program did not and
does not need much improving. It might benefit by faster clock rates and
more RAM, or it might not. We've all seen wonderful programming that used
very little resources. And not just command line, but graphics too. Do you
know of the (mostly European) 4K contests? The idea was to pack as much
visual and audio data as you could in 4K or less. One of the nicest I've
seen was a pattern generator that would fill your screen with all sort of
curves, shades and figures, called Shadebob. Written in asm, all of 320
bytes heavy.
Now, Windows came up to fill an empty niche, not just Mr Gates's pockets.
There are people out there who just won't take the trouble to learn a few
simple commands, and who actually believe (not just because Microsoft tells
them so) that big and complicated and heavy is better and nicer. This has
nothing to do with computers. It's also true about cars, refrigerators and
clothes.
DOS (and any serious OS) can do anything Windows does, because Windows is a
DOS program. Micrsoft thought up the Windows graphical interface as a
wrapper for individual programs, only after their spectacular failure with
dosshell.exe (remember DOS 4.0?). Yet dosshell came with both a text-based
and a graphics mode. The first was no real advantage over the DOS command
line, and those were the times of the Norton Commander and Xtree. The second
was slow and uncomfortable. Yet even the first Windows took up so much
memory and processor that the race was on. Remember the first memory
extension? It was not Extended memory but Expanded, the LIM-EMS standard.
LIM? Lotus-Intel-Microsoft.
Now, windows are fine. I liked them a lot even before Windows existed. I
used windowing in the Brief editor and in WordStar. The Norton Commander
could turn one of its panels into a view or list window. And multitasking is
fine too, but if Windows can multitask so can any other DOS program, it's
just (just!) a matter of writing the code. DOS can do anything that Windows
can, because Windows is DOS with a lot of specific libraries to call upon.
Have we gained anything? Yes and no. Yes, because anything that gives you
more power actually gives you the option to use it as you see fit; you don't
have to build 500KB exes just because Visual Basic would like you to: they
can be quite simply trimmed to half- or a quarter-size just by unchecking a
few default options. An no, since there are no new powerful libraries being
written for DOS, so if you need to move on you have to accept Windows or
perish. Perhaps that's one of the main reasons for the Linux success story:
you have beatiful GUIs, but you don't need them unless you really need them.
I still keep an 8MB 486 at 100 MHz, Win95. Use it mainly to run old progs,
backup & security, and for tests. Most new software won't even try to
install (MSIE 4+ flatly refuses setup in less than 12MB RAM). But it's
hooked to the home LAN, including a small, efficient Internet proxy client,
and Netscape Navigator 4.75 handles it beautifully. Mail and text web pages,
fine as always. Images do slow it down, but that's to be expected.
So, turn your spyglass around. It's not that Windows should improve
anything. Windows is just a tool, a medium. There are very good, fast and
simple programs written for Windows, and there are heavy, cumbersome ones
too. But that was true of DOS too. Look at the Windows programs you prefer,
you admire most. They will probably give you as much performance as they
can, using the least resources. Or, alternatively, if they use lots of
resources they will give you a lot of goodies in exchange.
If I get a vote, I'd say: keep'em both, the way Linux does. To each his own,
and to each problem the proper tool.
Gerardo
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