End of the DOS era?

[Dillinger4]

Is is true that Micro$oft is phasing out DOS from their operating systems? I just read some information comming from the Windows XP convention reciently held in New York that they are doing this. Do you think it a good or bad thing? And does anyone know when the final release of VB.Net is expected to be in stores? Thanks

[Cander]

Final release is stores February.

DOS needs to go. Backwards compatability is fine and all, but not for like 10 years. People have had plenty of time to update their software with the times and quite frankly if you need Dos, just stick with Dos or a version of Windows that still supports it.

[Dillinger4]

mmmmmm yes i do agree with you that does have to go. I just wasnt too sure how other people would feel about it's non existence in future OS's. At least it will get people to stop writing
console programs.

[JoshT]

NT/2000 haven't needed DOS since 1995 or so...

And cmd.exe doesn't really have anything to do with DOS...

[filburt1]

cmd is just a (better) DOS command line parser that happens to have the same syntax.

[JoshT]

Yeah, but it does not need DOS to work. DOS is a OS. Cmd.exe runs in the Win32 subsystem, not the WOW subsytem. Win32 fully supports consoles and standard input and output, there's no need for DOS. When you use VC++ to write a Win32 Console app, you are not writing a DOS app.