Was working on Visual Studio 2017 for few months, learned some basic Xamarin forms, and picked up C# by setting aside my long-time favourite VB.NET.
A few days ago, I downloaded 5.5 GB of Visual Studio 2019 with key features. Upon opening the IDE, my eyes were wandering, was it because Microsoft developers had cramped too many functions into their IDE?
The time machine travelled back to 1998... I recall several scenes. I was sitting in front of a blue-colour monitor. That was the usual colour of Turbo Pascal 7 IDE. I was building my DOS empire at that time.
1. Audio Player and Recorder: Yes, 8-bit direct access to Sound Blaster 16. (Happily bought a Sound Blaster 16 programming guide for RM 10 at that time)
2. Image & Video Format. Yes, 320x200x256 low resolution graphical output. I invented my own compression-less image (DLP) and video format (DLV), also with their respective converter (e.g. PCX to DLP) and player.
3. Text Screen Capture: Yes, a TSR for users to capture text screen in the background and automatically save as file.
4. Font Manipulation: Yes, I even had a font editor and loader to customize the 256 of ASCII characters.
5. Programming Language: Yes. It was my own compiler which generated 8-bit CPU machine code as .COM executable.
6. Utilities: Yes, address book / calculator / files cleaner / disk copier / Text-to-HTML converter.......etc
...I was like almost building my own Operating Environment (NOT operating system) in text mode under DOS platform.
But I forgot that the ICT is trending fast in the glimpse of an eye. Microsoft is slowing eliminating DOS from its Windows solution and users cannot run legacy DOS programs in 64-bit Windows nowadays.
It destroyed my DOS empire, but in a good way, that it benefits millions others, with operating systems which deliver higher performance, and better user experience.
While this thread is nothing coding-specific, I would like advice on how to adapt to IT ever-changing world, and slowly forget about DOS era.
It is true that I have tried to adapt to IT in stages:
2000 ~ 2003: I worked as Psion OPL cum Symbian C++ programmer, where Psion UK shut their consumer market in 2003 and Symbian has had the same fate...
2004 ~ 2008: Mostly VB6 + MSSQL + CR, I was involved in business software solution, e.g. POS, SMS (School Management System). (As you might already know, VB6 or classic VB is no longer relevant nowadays)
....Basically I am not a programmer who works in office now, but I still consider myself a hobbyist programmer.
I am sorry folks, too difficult for me to forget the yesteryear, especially almost entire of my efforts have gone in vain. Not to mention a few utilities I developed for Windows 3.11 using VB2 and VB3.
My former DOS empire... until Windows destroyed it, I still cannot forget the good old days