Posted on 09/20/2013 11:02:42 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
I’ll go to manual Selectrics to type my bestselling novels, before I switch to a tablette! My cold dead hands, etc.
And yet you mention it twice.
Because it is really worth mention - PowerShell puts NTVDM to shame almost as much as NTVDM puts DOS to shame.
I was comparing Windows to early Windows (even if I got the early date wrong. And I ran Windows 1.0)
Fine - but the core serious work is still a comparison of the Windows DOS console v. NTVDM - The console is the meat and potatoes of OS power, and there is *no* comparison between DOS and NTVDM consoles.
So tell me, where are batch queues, with user modifiable priorities, permissions, ownership, etc?
Easy enough to do anything you want with a script and task scheduler (which can be called from the script, or the script called through the task scheduler...) I can set such things up with only Windows console tools and pretty much batch scripting, though my preference would be to use external tools for convenience (ie: inifile read/write capability, which is possible to do with on-board console tools, but not worth the effort).
A FOR loop has been known since the dawn of programming languages. Batch queues have been known for 40 years or more. Manipulation/management of running processes for as long.
I know that - I've been around since DOS 3 - It is what you can DO with the FOR loop... A DOS FOR cannot come close to what an NTVDM FOR can do - even knowing all the 'stupid DOS tricks'... And almost all the NTVDM console tools are likewise juiced up comparatively. I am a DOS *nut*, but there is almost no instance where I would prefer to be scripting in DOS over NTVDM. NTVDM is much more powerful, and one can easily manipulate running processes, etc... I can't think of anything in the system that I cannot do from the cmdline, with the exception of manipulating actual windows and positioning... But VBScript and Wscript can handle that.
Windows yesterday and today is MSDOS with pictures. (Exaggeration.)
If that were true, all my DOS based scripts (over 300 of them) and all my BASIC scripts would still run today... most of them broke in Win2k, and what isn't broke is generally deprecated, since on-board tools can do it better. The only thing I wish I had was an interface for the user (pictures) instead of only console - there is a vast wasteland between the console and the desktop - I had to write an app as a batch helper to bridge that gap, using html as a front end for batch scripts. But if you don't mind a console, Windows is highly manageable.
I’ll shuddup, you know much more than I do. Still, one wishes that the tools that you know how to develop or that others have developed were part of the operating system out of the box.
You're talking to the wrong guy - I am not even good enough in PowerShell to be dangerous... I messed with it enough to be impressed, but it is a world away from NTVDM. That is one of my projects to explore once the snow flies here... But even so, I doubt it comes anywhere near bash.
I know, right? What good is FOR if it can't read lists? But, the trade-off is that pipes don't work, or at least work erratically, because each command is basically a new instance of the console, and pipes don't seem to be inherited. I would LOVE to have reliable pipes back. It is the one thing I really miss from DOS. The work-around means pretty much everything has to be output to a temp batch to run.
Too bad microsoft took so long to come to scripting table. (unix has had awesome scripting capabilities forever)
Windows is a different economy - It has never claimed to have a powerful console, so one doesn't assume the tools are there. Every DOS guy I know has a pathed directory full of toys that make up the difference. Even now, I am more likely to use external apps because I have been using them so long that their syntax is familiar... I have an old console app named LSTFILE that I prefer for processing lists, even though FOR can do it... or when I need a bang-counter, even though SET has a bang-counter built in... old dogs/new tricks : )
So I guess it is a different expectation - DOS/Win just presupposes one needs to have a toy box full of simple add-on apps, while in nix, one fights arcane syntax to do what you know is already in-built. Is one better than the other? Hard telling...
Heck, even IBM DOS 7.0 had REXX, which was incredibly powerful.
REXX is still around - I don't use it myself, as I don't have the convenience of a client/server orientation. My stuff has to work in the field, so I have pretty much written my own console apps to maintain a fair degree of portability... That which isn't native on the box (which I try very hard to adhere to), that is. There IS a portable REXX, I hear, that works in conjunction with Java somehow - but I really haven't messed with it yet, and really don't need more toys.
Nah, I am just a dumb service tech in timbuckfour. It is my curse to have been forced to keep up with what the Win OS can do so that I can do my job. I was just taking exception to the idea that NT is no improvement over DOS/Win9x, because despite all it's faults, that particular claim is not true.
peace.
I tell you, I’m just pissed this week, having run a script that was supposed to forward a whole bunch of Gmail messages to a pal of mine, a script I found on the net programmed by some Indian whiz who has an entire website of such scripts, invites questions, doesn’t answer them, and the script not only failed, but it runs every day, fails and sends me a long log, while I’m unable to stop it (I don’t want to delete it just yet.)
My complain is with the currently accepted programming practices, which I trace to UNIX (and from programmers educated on UNIX to all systems we deal with today), which skip error checking, reporting and recovery, and just let the programs crash. That’s not how I learned programming, but that’s how it is done, and I’ve had some professional experience with it when I landed the worst job I ever had which involved supporting installations of a third party product that ran on several UNIX flavors and a couple of other platforms. The installation script failed (on some weird UNIX flavors such as SGI it failed every time), unless it met perfect conditions, that is the conditions under which the developers developed it, and whatever they were was never stated or completely known. Lovely.
(By the way, Gmail does not allow forwarding more than a single message, or single ‘conversation’ as it’s called, that is to say a thread, at a time, so such a script could be very useful if it worked. This one is written in Google Apps (?) and I’m thinking of looking at the code to see what can be done. In the meantime, I had to forward those messages one by one.
That’s my end of the week rant.
MS doesn’t operate on a model of giving users what they want, they operate on a model of giving users what MS thinks they should want. That is the main source of customer dissatisfaction. Blaming the customers for a business’ failures is just silly.
That has been my complaint ever since I made the mistake of buying the Windows ME Upgrade. MS has never acknowledged any of their blunders which angered consumers. Their Idiot in Corporate MS who thought touch screen format on a desktop was a good idea should have been fired along with his supervisor and perhaps even the next level supervisor.
That said desktops will always have a market. I do not want a screen I can not see well enough to read the text. Right now I use a 20 inch screen. I have a 19" laptop but the desktop gets the most use. Several more issues as well which make tablets undesirable is not all homes have high speed access. I'm on dial up and it looks like that will be the only service available for at least a decade in my area.
Right now I'd be happy to pay lets say $100 for a continued relicensing and support for XP. It's what I want and it's all I need. Arrogance from the top down is the biggest problem MS at some point needs to correct and start listening to all users.
LOL!
I've never understood why this is a selling point. A properly designed operating system is rebooted seldom enough that it could take 10 minutes, and you'd still not really care.
arcane is in the eye of the beholder. In my opinion, the sheer power of the tools available in unix systems dwarfs anything windows has that I've seen. The fact that you can use nothing but standard command line tools without even making use of any of the more esoteric functions and use them to manipulate data points up the inherent power 30+ years of development by people who want the power have given us un unix systems.
Here's one of my favorite real world examples that I've personally needed in the past: I have a 2GB logfile of querylog data from a DNS server. I need to determine who the top 20 hosts that are querying that DNS server.
sed 's/#/ /g' LOGFILE | awk '{print $11}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20 > LOGFILE.clients.txt
I agree with you - and I did not mean 'arcane' to be derogatory. I only meant to draw attention to the difference in economy - nix operators expect robust tools, capable of *every* nuance and function, where win operators rely more upon simpler tools, more purpose built... It is natural in the nix world to remain within the on-board tools (because the tools are robust), whereas it is natural in win to lug around a toy box full of tools that have been specifically sought out for a purpose (because the on-board tools could not do what was necessary).
No doubt the final advantage goes to you, once you've mastered the use of the provided tools (no small thing), and especially so, because all you need is already on-board. There is very little need for purpose-built external applications in nix.
But I have an advantage or two also - I only need to learn what I need - simple tools, and simple syntax, bent toward specific purposes... I carried a tool called 'Swiss Army Knife' for a while - The thing could do dang near anything. but it's syntax was so elaborate and unintuitive that I finally discarded it and wrote simple tools to replace it with.
It is that mind-set difference that I am pointing out. It isn't whether one is preferred to the other - just different. It isn't like I am prevented from doing anything I need to do. And while I can get pretty grumpy about adding yet another external console app to my toolbox, there really isn't anything I have endeavored to do on a win box that I have failed to accomplish.
The fact that you can use nothing but standard command line tools without even making use of any of the more esoteric functions and use them to manipulate data points up the inherent power 30+ years of development by people who want the power have given us un unix systems.
First off, I don't know anyone who wants less power in this game, no matter which field of computing they are in - It is just a matter of course, being a win guy, that long ago I was driven away from any expectation of the cmd box having what I need - But what I need is readily available (or easily written), and all I need to do is carry a thumb with me - simply firing a specialized cmd stub on that thumb hauls me up a cmd box with all my toys pathed and with (super) elevated privileges. Get my hands on a box and I can hack it any way you like.
It is a bit more of a kludge if I have to go remote, or have a client operate a process in the field - I have portable packages for doing that, but I always have to be sure that it's dependencies are available, and one must routinely be aware to write scripts fault-protected against their absence... but somehow, I get along just fine.
I don't begrudge the power of unix - hell, I have most of the ported unix tools as part of my tools - Nor do I begrudge that Windows has a comparatively weak console. It really doesn't matter once one figures out how to work with external apps and make them portable... with that addition, the Windows console can be anything you want it to be.
LOL!
B5 humor is always welcome
Windows and Unix mentalities are definitely different, and you actually have to have a much different way of looking at them to make the computers work for you. Linux fits the way I work, and that's cool. If Windows fits the way you work, that's cool too.
My biggest problem with windows, is the fact that even those of us hard-core unix geeks have to be familiar with windows, which generally gives us a broader breadth of experience, while the same is not true for windows users.
There are people who still write code for Commodore 64, like a club. Writing programs in 64 bytes or whatever must be pretty tough but apparently they get them online and stuff.
LOL! - It ain't changed much, except my 'floppy' is now an 8g thumb drive. I was a DRDOS guy - I still have Caldera DOS laying around here somewhere... But by the end (well not really the end, even yet) I wound up in MS-DOS 7.10 (from under win98SE), primarily for reliable LFN FAT32 and NTFS drivers, not to mention pretty good function in a Win98 console. By then the 'floppy' had turned into a bootable CD complete with a miniWin98 that I used all the way into WinXP (Remember, Win2k came out without a way to make a bootable disk?)
Now my miniWins are still CD based, but all the tools, portables, and installables are on the thumb, because the library of needed stuff is huge and needs to be updated all the time - I have automated that process, and the thumb goes to bed in my server every night to be mirrored from the updated LAN store. It has grown so big and complicated that it is almost stupid.
I guess that I liked small, efficient programs that performed a required task even back then.
Oh, how I miss those little ASM beauties! Amazingly small, and incredibly powerful! One of my greatest mistakes was not learning ASM. But batch lead to BAS, and I fell in love with Pascal... and of course I wound up in Delphi with a bend toward html... But I am envious of those tiny little apps and their authors. If I could find a duffer older than me, I might learn it yet. : )
Linux fits the way I work, and that's cool. If Windows fits the way you work, that's cool too.
Yup. Don't think I am sleeping at the wheel - I am STUCK in win, because that's where my client base is - If I had my druthers, I'd be in Linux right now (Slack, BSD, Ubuntu). But I hack Windows, Access, and Outlook... If I don't use them, I don't know how to fix them... Therefore, Windows. And sadly, my foray into Open Source on Win (OOo, Thunderbird/Lightning, among many others) has left me woefully behind in MSOffice as it is. Windows Phones have increased the need, and I find myself back in MSOffice once again (PTOOEY!).
I have put a lot of folks on Linux - But Linux seldom breaks - So Windows is where the money is for me : )
No one ever listen to Zathras.
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