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command-promptdos

How to create a ms-dos 7.10 program?

In times to times I see at stores some sellers' programs made in MS-DOS. The program is just black and white, the usage is basically by keyboard. It is not the command prompt because it seems to have a 3D visual, something can be clicked by the mouse, what in cmd doesn't happen.

Below I put two images that show those program I said:

1:

photo 1

2:

photo 2

So my questions are:

  1. What OS the computer use to operate a program like that.
  2. How can I make a program like that, what software I need and what language I need to know?
Solution

  • The pictures you've shown could be screens of software made by some (old) programming languages like C++, Clipper, GwBasic, QuickBasic, Pascal and a few others. These languages were used before the "magic" of the graphical interface (Windows, MacOs etc) and later got improvements to run graphically, taking many advantages like mouse support and, most important, easier network support.

    Clipper made an enormous success at the Brazil of the 90's. Every street business had it's own Clipper soft to help managing.

    Some of these programming languages even evolved to use a graphical IDE (Integrated Development Environment), like VisualC++, VisualBasic, Delphi (as the evolution of old Pascal) etc. But then the executables build with them turned to be graphically demanded, i.e.: they began to depend on a graphical user interface to run - and so it was the days when executables didn't need anything to run... just a green phosphorus display and a coarse keyboard with remnants of pizza and ketchup :D

    I see by your pictures you live in Brazil. Probably you see yet nowadays old systems with this "DOS" aspect running in some places like video location stores (video locadoras) and car parking stations (estacionamentos). These old soft systems truly require lot less resources than their actual counterparts developed under graphical environment like Windows, but in real they have very poor support for networking (this could mean a printer on a lan too) and runs in "compatibility mode" only, cause our nowadays systems are mainly 64-bits (and they are 32). The compatibility mode can represent problems with memory allocation, can down the performance of your entire environment, can represent risk to your machine, can make your anti-virus spam annoying virus alerts etc.

    I would not say "it's useless", but in fact, to be honest - almost useless. They can be useful if you intent to develop something very precise, taylor made, with a taste of vintage computing, for a video location store, (if you own the business) for example, it can be fairly ok. But the efforts can not be fruitful if you have to transform this first system into another one, to make an adaptation, for example, for another store or business. These languages, based on their proper IDE, have very low productivity, no encapsulation, no objects to reuse.

    In terms of OS to develop some of these softs, normally you will be tied to your destination platform: if you want to develop this "text-mode" soft to run in a Linux, you will have to program in a Linux machine, cause this will be the environment who will create those specific bitecodes to run only on that platform. If you intent to run your app on a Windows (DOS) machine, you will have to delve into a Windows IDE.

    Maybe an investigation could be done, discharging this "text-mode" idea, into the Java platform (I am not talking about applets nor Android), just pure 100% java: it is window enabled, small in terms of kbytes, does not demand DLLs to be installed on destination nor it will make that famous "Registry Mess" every soft do on install; then you can get benefits from an Object Oriented language, already net enabled, almost multi platform (with small changes you can make your basic code run on Win, Mac and Linux), and with a syntax very popular and near from that of C++ but with much automated facilities (avoiding you to get bitten as C++ does) as memory management.

    The sad conclusion is: maybe it is worthless to fight against the evolution.

    Please, feel free to check my answer as the correct one if you think it was helpful to address your doubts. Thank you.