DOS is a general acronym for "Disk Operating System", though it came to refer to the operating system used in the IBM PC, particularly Microsoft's MS-DOS.
BASIC came bundled as a free programming language when you bought DOS, but it is also the language used for two key components, EDIT and HELP. You need BASIC, therefore, to run either of these key applications, such as on your Emergency Boot Disk.
I think it is a real pity that Basic is not taken seriously by more developers. I agree that in its early days it was, well, "basic", but it evolved into a very powerful development platform in the guise of Visual Basic. Productivity was far higher than with Visual C++, and for what few low level functions it could not support you could always create a DLL using C/C++ and pull that in from VB.
On Linux we still have Gambas, which is easily the fastest way to create a Linux GUI application. It is very similar to VB, and its flavour of Basic takes the language to a level beyond even VB. For projects where I have complete freedom of choice I use nothing else. It runs faster than python and, for GUI apps, it's far simpler and more productive.
Comment #2 posted on 2022-08-20 03:36:17 by Some Guy On The Internet
Visual Basic 6.0 for the Win.
How many of you used yahoo messenger during the Win98 era? I remember these software handguns called "Booters". They were created using VB and everyone had one. It was the wild west on the internet and lots of feelings where hurt followed by the BSOD. Good Times!
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