Exploring A Bunch of Retro Programming Tools (Mailcall #1)

Since starting this channel, I've received some donations, some very generous viewers have made donations to the channel, including a full set of Borland C++ 2.0 floppy disks, the Borland Brief text editor, a literal copy of DESQView, and a sealed in box copy of Visual C# 2003. I've been figuring out how to do a mailcall properly, so here's my first attempt at doing so.

My socials:

Borland Brief is a full screen text editor which was very popular in the late 80s and early 90s as a macro based system. While I know that Brief was indeed sold as an independent package, I don't know if it was included in Borland C++ of this era.

As for Borland C++, this version is for both DOS and Windows. Interestingly, its from 1991, and targets Windows 3.0, and not the much more common 3.1. As a result of it's early status, it doesn't include the famous Borland OWL (Object Windows Library), and while there's a specific version of Turbo Debugger for Windows, it obviously doesn't work off Windows 95.

DESQView on other hand was one of the earlist, and most popular multitasking environments for DOS, and competed with Windows and DR-DOS in this area. Made by the world famous Quarterdeck Software, DESQView became less and less relevant as Quarterdeck lost ground to Windows, and eventually disappeared. I'd love to find a copy of DESQView/X and explore full X11 capability under DOS.

Finally, rounding out the set is a boxed copy of Visual C# 2003. Here we talk a bit about Microsoft's .NET environment, the broader Visual Studio .NET, and how this version was a significant departure from the "classic" Studio versions of the past, and how it was the start of the Shell environment that followed.

After compiling some Hello World programs, we took the board for a quick spin to modern Windows 10 to see if we have working backwards compatibility:

Interesting Timestamps:

#vintagecomputing #retrodevelopment #borland #mailcall #desqview

[NCommander]

So, one slight mistake, the donation was sent in by Fnord666 (three 6s)I apparently wrote it wrong in the script. I'll give a formal apology here in the next video since they gave their blessing to publish this with the mistake.

Still, my bad!.

[LoneTech]

When debugging graphical programs, it was very helpful to have both a monochrome and colour video card; that way we could run the debugger on the monochrome display while the program performed graphics on the colour display. This was possible because MDA/MGA/HGC used a different memory address than CGA/EGA/VGA.

[jfwfreo]

The Borland development tools (especially Turbo Pascal 6 and later Borland Delphi and Borland C++) were a large part of where I got my start in programming.

[mrmattyboy]

I know a lot of other Youtubers probably get too many donations to do this, but making an episodeto fully going into the donations is a _really_ nice thing to see - as well as a great thing to watch :D

[zkdr]

This is one of my new favorite channels. I like that you explain things as you go in a detailed and entertaining way.

[nathanpc]

I would really love to see more development tools on your channel. I also collect and play around with old development tools all the time, and it's great to see someone that enjoys it as well. Keep up the amazing work!

[yuytbe]

Including full subtitles is an instant sub. Thank you.

[LesKingBNE]

I love your work mate. Honestly keep being you

[ramoun]

that was an epic dose of nostalgia. thanks man

[Kindjie]

That Visual Studio was what I first learned to code in professionally. ☺️ I remember loving it. 😅

[somecsgo]

I love your videos! Got them recommended to me randomly, and seeing things not work or retro pseudo-nostalgic things iro pseudo-nostalgic thing

[alexjones]

Love seeing these old IDEs - I first started programming in the early 2010's, so these are tools I've never seen used before. Learning about old dev environments is exactly the kind of hyper specific niche only possible on YouTube haha. Think I might track down a copy of VS 2003 myself, or perhaps an old iso since MS no longer sells it, and tinker with it too, or perhaps VS 6.0 (I think it was 6.0?) for Win9x. I've used Win9x a fair amount as an end user, but come to think of it, I know next to nothing on how 9x programs were actually written or the quirks for developing for it...

[KiyaheikeMeUk]

Loved Brief. Used it a lot in my early dev days even wrote a number of extensions for the dev team to help with Clipper code formatting

[ampamp]

I first started programming in 1977... what shocks me is how I could forget brief!

[punboleh]

Memories :)
My grandfather got me started with Turbo Pascal on a 286 after he first taught me BASIC on a C64.

[syntaxerorr]

Works by accident? lol This is one of the major reasons large entities use Windows, backwards compatibility. Also a major factor in Linux kernel space, you don't break userspace.

[ruadeil_zabelin]

Oh wow yea, I remember that prereq disc from the early vs .net installations. When I was in Uni i attended the Microsoft launch presentation of Visual Studio 2010 in Second Life (yep, you read that correctly). At the end of it they took people's addresses and shipped everyone a version of VS2010 proffesional edition; which ofcourse was great for me since up to then I was only legally able to use the super limited Express edition. By then the prereq "disc" was part of the same dvd and just another installer that it ran first.

[zemapg]

God that visual studio box/installer takes me back. I was obsessed with learning different languages/fucking around with them despite being only 12-ish at the time of release but I begged my dad to get it for me and he surprised me one day with it after he came home from work. good times

[Scoopta]

Man I know this video is 3 years old and so some of the things mentioned here likely won't ever happen but both the dive into J++/MSJVM and .NET backwards compatibility sound super interesting.

[roelbrook]

Those big posters are generally put on the wall of the office, not in classrooms. This was a time before StackOverflow, and sometimes these posters were actually used to quickly look up i.e. relations between components