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Comment by 2mlWQbCK | Hacker News Reader

I think of MS-DOS mostly as the ultimate fantasy console. It is sad that the only way to write something once and not have to maintain it to keep up with breaking dependencies all the time is to target a dead platform.

But I never had any compatibility issues with FreeDOS? It seems like a good implementation of DOS. I mostly use DOSBox-X, but I use FreeDOS now and then as well. It is the only DOS I would consider running on hardware.

BTW did anyone else notice that Microsoft included almost a complete 1988 vintage 16-bit DOS toolchain in their MIT-licensed MS-DOS repo? It has Microsoft C 5.1, MASM 5.1, Make, and several other tools, plus libraries and include-files. All of it in less than 3 MB.

https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/src/TOOLS

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I've taken to saying, much to the chagrin of my techy friends, that "the best language is a dead language". Usually speaking about C which isn't even dead but maybe should be, just stick with C89 and pretend that was the end (though for more modern targets C11 with atomics is tempting).

Along the same lines, maybe the best platform is a dead platform. And there is a mature emulator, or many, for pretty much every modern platform. I've definitely been exploring DOS as a way forward (lol) out of the madness of modern computers.

Radically simple, single tasking, and local first with a stable platform that is close to the metal. What is not to love? I mean maybe it doesn't hurt it was on my first computers so a nostalgia factor I'm sure is at play as well.

DOS can also be a nice, predictable runtime for embedded or low-level systems, as long as you're running x86. Some implementations are even 64-bit clean, such as this one: https://github.com/dosemu2/fdpp.

I remember this project (https://jimhall.itch.io/toy-cpu), where the author shipped his emulator as a DOS binary instead of a web-based JavaScript version that would eventually break over time.

DOS can serve as a lightweight, efficient, and predictable runtime with extremely low system requirements and no need for updates. It can run on bare metal or as a WASM binary.

The development tools are small, free, and reproducible (e.g., Turbo C), ensuring that the code will still compile and run just fine even 10 years from now. Oh, and it also has some cool TUI libraries a la QuickBASIC. I’d argue it’s still a worthy option, if it’s not user-facing.

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