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Richard Heathfield wrote:
> santosh said:
>
> <snip>
>
>> And another major problem [of Turbo C] is that you are pretty
>> much forced to use Windows.
>
> Not at all! You can use MS-DOS instead! :-) (And I do, sometimes.)
>
> But yes, that's a pretty serious drawback.
>
>> I agree that it's a marvellous piece of programming, but then so were
>> many DOS/CP-M programs of that era.
>
> Rather like the pyramids. Have we *really* lost the techniques? Or are
> we just too lazy to use them?
I think we haven't lost the technique so much as the environments that
encouraged them.
Today we have huge operating systems, enormous APIs, innumerable
libraries, compatibility layers, etc. With DOS you could "talk to the
hardware" when necessary, but today, everthing must be done through
APIs. Also user expectations have grown. It's no longer acceptable to
ask the average user to use the command line. System security of course
is a big push towards more complexity. Can you imagine a DOS system
connected to the internet and allowing arbitrary code execution?
So yes, the techniques are always there but not usable in a general
programming context. Of course the case is different for many embedded
systems and realtime programs.
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