#Doscember PC-DOS Programming circa 1983

In this #Doscember video, I walk through IBM's BASIC, C, and FORTRAN compilers (which were licensed from Microsoft), and show how they were used. I then show a copy of Turbo Pascal, as contrast.

[Momentvm]

Yes, please, more! I'm a dev working in C by 99% of my time. I'd love to get a hang of classic cowboy DOS coding. Thanks for the movie!

[Crw]

I worked using command-line DOS and OS/2 compilers from the 1984-1992 days. Microsoft C, Microsoft FORTRAN, Microsoft Macro Assembler, and Turbo Pascal. By the time I first used Turbo Pascal in 1988, the version 3.x and later versions could run the code from within the environment after compiling it, and Turbo 5.5, in my opinion, was a pinnacle and a very enjoyable product for writing code. I had to use Microsoft C at work and even on an IBM PC/AT, it could take a while (5 minutes or more) to compile and link a C program, which meant debugging could be frustrating because you could only make and test one change every 5 minutes. It was even worse at college using old IBM PCs with no hard drive and running compilers off floppy drives. It could literally take 10 minutes to compile and link a program to test a change. I'd been spoiled by the IBM 4381 and the "compile and run in seconds" speed using the friendly MUSIC (later MUSIC/SP) operating system. By the time I was using UNIX systems, they were fast enough compiling C code that it wasn't bothersome.

[cristiannicolae]

Very interesting video! I always wanted to see how editing in edlin was done, and now that I have I'm glad I started much later with the Borland tools. Also 500 early 80's dollars for a single compiler was highway robbery.

[spearPYN]

Beautiful....retro computing forever! I am still using computers from the 80s and 90s. Computers back then had a soul. Modern computing is essentialy a horror experience.

[evmemc]

Thanks a lot for this video, its really interesting! I like how you covered a lot of options people had at the time!

[OzzFan]

As someone who is trying to go back and learn DOS programming, this was a really fascinating video! Thanks for sharing!

[fsim]

Having to write code in UCSD Pascal after getting used to using Turbo Pascal felt like you were trying to play the piano with oven mitts on. :)

[DOS_Hoss]

Its been so long my memories are now fond ones - thank you

[TheSulross]

Great tour of what software development was like that particular year on PCs. My software development vectored onto the Apple Macintosh. Bought a 128K but found it unusable until soldered in 512K denser memory chips. I got a product called Lightspeed C and it was very heavily influenced by Turbo Pascal - that IDE for the Mac is what launched me into a professional software development career. But I really have come to regard Turbo Pascal as the most important software program of the decade of the 1980s. So influential and so enabling.

[bettyswunghole]

*Sooo* nice to hear someone say "asterisk" rather than "asterix"... 👍

[chriswareham]

The Borland products were brilliant! I still use Turbo C on my IBM 5150 for little hobby projects.

[fredkilner]

I used Turbo Pascal then Turbo C/C++ on 8086 PC. Used Turbo Pascal on Mac I bought at a goodwill store for $30. Those were good.

[hensonk]

My first programming experience on PC included dBase III

[DOSdaze]

Amazing how modern C++/C# still uses roughly the same patterns in their simplest forms. These tasks didn’t look much different than what I do currently with .cpp/.cs files and msbuild.

[acestapp]

Ahh, edlin. It's like vi in 3k.

And can you imagine running that C compiler off of a floppy disc? Hello World would take five minutes and two or three disk swaps.

[MichaelEhling]

Ah, yes. Turbo Pascal was easier, faster, and cheaper. But it didn't come with those lovely IBM cloth-covered, boxed, 3-ring-binders. The more of those you had on your shelf, the better, eh? :-)

[ian_b]

No no no, real programmers write the hex direct onto the disk sectors using DEBUG.