Why Learn DOS?

Other than the few people still plugging data into Revelation or continuing their world in Theme Park, DOS finds itself a bit out of favor these days. For some reason, DOS is still a topic taught here in our University (TANGENT: Microsoft Office 2003 is still taught here, too, but that's not as surprising).

And it's not just DOS commands. We learned about the 8-3 limitation of DOS, as well.

Sheesh. This doesn't make for very interesting reading, does it?

Let's do this fast. We learned about "directories". They're better known as "folders" for all you Windows(≥95)/Mac/BSD people, as well as some of those fancier Linux distro people. You might know them as "drawers" if you're an AmigaOS fanatic...

TANGENT
...weirdos. There's actually quite a number of you people, aren't there? Quite a thriving community still existing. It's actually kinda cute--it's a bit like those old people who drop everything they're doing at 7:00PM to watch Jeopardy! (TANGENT: ever heard of the Quiz Show Scandals?) It's nice to see the obsession in old people, because it's basically all they have (especially since the discontinuation of the Price is Right). Seeing twenty-year-olds into it is a bit creepy though, as is the same with AmigaOS. Yes, it's still alive and well, but still--just move onto Linux, will you?

Though I guess it's better than Mac (THAT tangent is for another time)
/TANGENT

We also looked at basic commands that you can do in the Command Prompt window. Puzzlingly enough, we spent the most time on 'FORMAT'. Two errors I noticed here (sorry prof):

1. A complaint was raised that FORMAT doesn't ask for a confirmation. To the best of my knowledge, this only happens in the Command Prompt; DOS will ask for confirmation.
2. Low Level Formatting was described as writing 0's to every bit on the disk. This is wrong! Truth be told, that's really nitpicking; I hate when people do it to me. I also hate grammar Nazis. (Also, regular Nazis.)

We also learned about 'CD', the '.' and the '..' (I need this parenthetical statement so I can stick a period at the end of this sentence without making it look weird).

Done.

P.S. Yes, I know they ported Amiga to the OLPC X1. No one cares. Except you weirdos.

WTBBQ?

This is a blog about DOS. It's an assignment. If you are somehow here and are not my professor, I would suggest you leave; you won't find very new information, and you certainly won't find particularly good writing.

Onward!