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What were the MS-DOS programs that the moricons.dll icons were intended for?

(devblogs.microsoft.com)
274 points rbanffy | 1 comments | 13 May 25 11:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.239s | source
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90s_dev ◴[16 May 25 13:28 UTC] No.44005274[source]▶
When I was a kid, my dad upgraded our home computer from DOS 5 or 6 to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. It was the first GUI that I ever used, and it was amazing comparitively. Every app was mysterious and innovative and wonderful.

I tried Borland C++ and it was absolutely confusing, but I was probably just too young. Even QBasic was deeply confusing for a long time, but eventually I finally made a simple, terribly written and horribly broken Bomberman clone.

Those looking to experience something similar to that feeling should buy pico8.

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sksrbWgbfK ◴[16 May 25 14:10 UTC] No.44005746[source]▶
> Even QBasic was deeply confusing for a long time

For one whole year, I thought that Qbasic and Turbo Pascal were text editors that could also run games. I didn't understood that I had access to real compilers and that I could actually change the programs. Sometimes kids are stupid...

As for your Pico8 suggestion, you can always get the open-source equivalent https://tic80.com/ if you don't have the money.

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asveikau ◴[16 May 25 15:47 UTC] No.44006843[source]▶
I remember being a kid and seeing BASIC in a book from the library and not understanding how to run it. I thought maybe if you saved it in a file with the right extension it would just run. Eventually I figured out how to use the interpreter.
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1. xnorswap ◴[16 May 25 16:25 UTC] No.44007286[source]▶
You've reminded me of how I near bricked the family 386 because I wanted to more easily play GORILLAS.BAS.

I was quite used to loading it up in QBASIC.EXE and then executing it to play.

But I wanted to just run it by opening the file in DOSSHELL.

I knew Windows (possibly just DOSSHELL?) had the concept of file associations, so there I went reassociating things in ways I thought might get .BAS to "just run". It didn't work to get gorillas working, and in the process it seemed to mess up a bunch of other things.

This was very late for still using a 386, I think our friends had pentiums by this point.

I don't know if my Dad realised what I'd done and kept quiet about it, or just didn't realise how I'd been fiddling with those settings, but I think the extra "things seem wonky" was a nice excuse for us to finally get upgraded into the windows 95 and CD-ROM era.