Grandpa with Rotary Phone Fixes Your Spaceship

[Uncle Gizmo]

Debugging AI with DOS
I’m knee-deep in debugging a Python script that’s chatting up Open AI and juggling a vector database like it’s the belle of the tech ball. And guess what? I’m leaning hard on DOS to get around—yes, DOS, that ancient relic of computing! I’m scribbling down commands like CD and .. as if I’m an archaeologist brushing dust off a digital dinosaur. Here I am, using Python—a language that’s practically a senior citizen in tech years—and DOS, which might as well have been carved into stone tablets, to wrangle some of the most cutting-edge AI and database tech out there. The irony’s thicker than a badly indented code block! It hit me mid-debug: what’s going to replace DOS in this wild mashup of old and new? Let’s dig into this a bit, because the juxtaposition is too good not to explore.

Fossil DOS
First off, let’s age these fossils. DOS, or the Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS), kicked off in 1981 when Microsoft bought and rebranded 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products. That makes DOS a spry 44 years old as of today, April 9, 2025—older than most of the developers I know, and definitely old enough to have seen floppy disks as the height of fashion. Python, on the other hand, is the younger whippersnapper here. It was hatched by Guido van Rossum in 1989 during a Christmas coding spree, released to the world in 1991. That puts Python at 34 years old—still old enough to have a midlife crisis, but young enough to keep up with the AI crowd.

Remember DOS Commands?
Now, since I’m logging DOS commands like a tech historian, what are the top six most common ones people still send its way? Based on its legacy and lingering use in Windows Command Prompt (which owes its soul to DOS), here’s the hit list:

Top 6 DOS Commands
DIR - The granddaddy of file listing, showing you what’s lurking in your directory. It’s like yelling “roll call!” to your files.
CD - Change Directory, my trusty steed for navigating this debugging jungle. CD .. to back out, CD dir_name to dive in—it’s the GPS of the command line.
COPY - For duplicating files, because sometimes you just need a clone to mess with instead of the original.
DEL - The grim reaper of files. One wrong move, and poof, your script’s gone—hope you’ve got backups!
MKDIR (or MD) - Making directories to stash my Python scripts and vector database logs. It’s like building a tiny house for my code.
CLS - Clear Screen, because even in 2025, I need to wipe the slate clean when the terminal gets too cluttered with error messages from Open AI’s API.
It’s wild to think these commands, born in the era of neon leg warmers and synth music, are helping me debug a script that’s pinging the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence. DOS is like that quirky grandpa who still has a rotary phone but somehow knows how to fix your spaceship.

DOS Retired?
But here’s the kicker—what’s next? Is DOS finally ready to retire, or are we stuck with it forever like a tech cockroach? There’s no direct “DOS 2.0” in the pipeline, but modern command-line interfaces (CLIs) have been quietly elbowing it aside for years. Take PowerShell, Microsoft’s beefy successor—it’s been around since 2006 and integrates with Windows in ways DOS never dreamed of. It’s object-oriented, scriptable, and can handle complex tasks like managing cloud services or querying APIs—stuff DOS would choke on. For example, instead of DIR, you’ve got Get-ChildItem, which spits out detailed object data you can pipe into other commands. Or look at Windows Terminal, launched in 2019—it’s a shiny hub for Command Prompt, PowerShell, and even WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), letting you run Linux shells like Bash alongside DOS-style commands. The improvement? It’s faster, prettier, and supports tabs—imagine juggling multiple debugging sessions without Alt-Tabbing like a maniac.

Without DOS
On the open-source front, tools like FreeDOS keep the spirit alive for retro enthusiasts, but for cutting-edge work, Linux shells (e.g., Bash, Zsh) or cross-platform CLIs like cmder are stealing the show. They offer better scripting, autocomplete, and integration with modern systems—think grep for searching logs or curl to test my Open AI calls, all without DOS’s clunky 1980s baggage. The reason for the shift? DOS was built for a simpler time—single-tasking, floppy-driven PCs. Today’s AI and vector database workloads need muscle, flexibility, and network smarts that DOS just can’t muster.

Barnacle DOS
Amusingly, though, DOS hangs on like a stubborn barnacle. Why? It’s baked into Windows’ Command Prompt, and some legacy tools (or stubborn coders like me) still lean on it. I half-expect to find a DOS command etched into the side of a quantum computer someday. For now, I’ll keep CD-ing my way through this debug session, chuckling at the absurdity of using a 44-year-old system to wrangle 2025’s tech marvels. Maybe the real replacement for DOS isn’t a single tool—it’s the sheer audacity of us coders, stitching together the old and new like some glorious Frankenstein’s monster of software.

Constructed by my friend Grok - from my notes and observations .....

 

[DickyP]

Because it's old it doesn't mean it doesn't work and isn't the best tool for the job. I regularly use DOS commands.
Recently used .ini files as the simplest way to do multi user look-ups.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

If you are doing some networking research, some of the CMD-line utilities can be directed to create a file using the ">filename" command-line option. Which then gives you something that your VBA program can read as text. You can look at the ROUTE tables, the IPCONFIG info, and quite a few other specialized data sets. When I was working with the Navy, that ability (to gather data via a CMD batch-file) was a trivial way to gather data for historical or documentation purposes.