[doodlebugging]

At some point you were part of that group that you are labeling a mistake. At another point, your children are or will be if you have any. Locking all of these productivity tools in one generation is a recipe for failure. You should think outside the box that you are currently trapped in.

[someguydave]

nope, I learned how to compute on the DOS command line

[doodlebugging]

Same here. It's been a while.

[someguydave]

DOS still works

[doodlebugging]

Yes it does. So does my old HP-11C calculator I used to write the first programs, in RPN for oil well log analysis, that I ever wrote outside of a class assignment.

All of those routines were reprogrammed originally in a flavor of BASIC and it soon became obvious that ASCII log displays from digitized published materials were marginally useful as interpretation tools. Tabular data was far too dense. We needed pictures. Therefore we chased graphical methods of displaying data leading us to C and then C++ for the graphical routines that made it easy to display all of the data from an oil well log and to scroll the logs while zooming in and out.

We started all that in some flavor of DOS and as time went by and everyone dumped their latest OS incarnation, we moved thru MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, etc until MS finally got with the GUI environment plan like Apple's Mac and produced a near worthless GUI called Win386 and later Win95. For a time it was fun.

Linux, the old new kid on the block, still works great from the command line too. The GUI exists to streamline some of the things that are more easily digested in graphical formats. It has nothing to do with anyone's intelligence or ability to pick up skills they don't have today.