"Oren" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:14:48 -0500, "Robert Green"
wrote:

Ah, for the manly days of DOS when
you *had* to know the magic words to get anything out of the C: prompt.

Or write a 15 page batch file (BBS) and then call it at boot up.. I
had two phone lines in the day. The file would run modem commands,
even call me for a wake-up call :-\

I don't miss it at all.

I had a programmer that worked for me that could do things with batch files
that were astounding. We were having trouble at an installation run by a
data tyrant who was always making changes that would screw up our software.
This kid wrote batch files that scanned the network each day and created an
"image" of the system through directory commands, piping, etc. The next
time it was run, it would compare the last snapshot with the current one,
revealing which files had changed. That gave us some excellent ammo to
confront the data manager. "I see you changed so-and-so. Why?" After
enough of that, he stopped screwing with us.

I've saved a notebook of all the batch files this guy wrote because they
were so amazing. The DOS batchfile language was enormously powerful,
although 99% of the people that used batch files never got past anything
more simple than a serial list of commands to execute.

I miss it in the sense that you could tell right away whether someone knew
what they were doing based on how well they could navigate around from the
C: prompt. Now, they can just click around and *look* like they know what
they're doing. About the same as the switch from manual to automatic
cameras.

--
Bobby G.