Wondering if anyone on the forum uses DOS anymore? I sometimes will still get a system prompt and relive the good old days when you had to copy files via DOS and it was oh so easy to format your hard drive instead of the floppy you really meant to format.

I once had a boss at a huge law firm who did that when she was given the task of copying everything onto floppies from the hard drive of this old computer. This was awhile ago, and she didn't know anything about computers (just word processor units - they had this huge monster that everynight I had to backup to tape and it usually crashed in the middle - nasty).

Anyway, I asked her if she wanted me to copy the files since I was the only one who knew anything about computers themselves, and she was such a stuck-up idiot that she insisted on doing it herself, because it was for one of the partners of the firm. I warned her and warned her, but she wound up formatting the hard drive. She told the partner that the stuff was unretrievable (which I guess was sort of the truth ). He was pissed, and I valued my paycheck so I never told on her.

Proud to say I've never formatted a hard drive by mistake (at least I have one thing I can be proud of )

LOL! I have some bad memories of DOS mishaps myself..

I haven't used it for the longest time though. I only use it to run some partitial programs I have that boot from floppy disks. The funny thing is that I have to plug in my floppy disk drive each time I need to use it because I am using the space in my tower for a spare hard drive instead. I've only used the floppy drive maybe once or twice a year anyway recently, so it's not a big deal.

I don't know what the deal is with people still using tape drives. Sure they can backup a lot, but with portable hard drives coming down so much in price, it's just WAY easier to get a few spare drives. I personally have two portable hard drives that I use to backup and then mirror important files on.

I do use DOS for the java programs that I write. I have a command line compiler and executable. So I have to run the programs from DOS. So it helps keep me up on DOS commands.

I've used DOS, but it's been soooooo long (since HS, I'm thinking?) I'm sure I probably wouldn't even remember what to do with it if I had to use it

I do the same thing for J#. Its not too bad, i got a complete "mini program" i made just for it.

I'm showing my ignorance here, but do you have to work from a command prompt for Java?

With the java compiler and executable, I do. I don't know if they have built a version that works in the windows environment or not.

Thanks for the info, Mr. Snipes. I read somewhere that Microsoft created C+ primarily to compete against Java, since Java can operate across different platforms. Do you know if that's true or just another slam at poor little Billy Gates?

I do not know if that is true or not. I don't even know who create C, C++, or C#.

All of the languages mentioned, and many others, actually all compile down to the same code. even witha ll of the differences, they compile into the same thing and with .NET framework, the computers all recognize it no matter what language it was written in. .NET is the future, my friends.

Anyway, I use it just like Albey (We actually learned together) for J#. I've used it a bit for C++, but not for Java. They have a Visual J# as a part of the Visual Studio package, so yeah they have other ways than just the command prompt. I prefer the CP for now, because that's how I began with J#. I prefer Visual Studio for C++ and Java.