Microsoft Edit

The original edit.com, from around dos 6.22 (and later 7.0, ie. win95) was my first IDE. Well, I started with qbasic, so I was fairly familiar with it as it was similar (or same?), but when I started learning C/C++ with djgpp, I just continued using edit.com.

My "project file" was `e.bat` with `edit file1.cpp file2.cpp file3.cpp`, as it was one of the few editors that I knew that had a decent multi file support with easy switching (alt-1,2,3 ..). I still continue remapping editor keybindings to switch to files with alt/cmd-1,2,3,.. and try to have my "active set" as few of the first files in the editor

It wasn't a great code editor, as it didn't have syntax highlighting, and the indent behaviour wasn't super great (which is why in my early career had my indent was two spaces, as that was easy enough to do by hand, and wasn't too much like tab). But I felt very immediate with the code anyway.

I knew that many others used editors like `qedit`, but somehow they never clicked with me. The unixy editors didn't feel right in dos either.

Quickly trying this, it doesn't seem to switch buffers with the same keybindings, even if it does seem to support multiple buffers.

edit was a godsend after the `copy con` days

It may not have had syntax highlighting, but it did have syntax capitalization (for lack of a better term?). If you typed a line in all lowercase, after hitting enter it would automatically uppercase the reserved words. It wasn't much, but it helped

I remember using edlin a lot in my early computing days. It was murder to learn but once you knew how to wield it, it was excellent. I don’t know why I was forced to learn that but I needed it for something and stuck to it the entire time I used DOS for anything. And people were in awe when you used it while they watched. “What the hell was that!?”

You should raise that as an issue. If things like that get in early enough, they get heard.

And it wasn't just similar. It was literally the same. EDIT.COM simply started QBASIC up with a special flag. One could just run QBASIC with the flag. As I said at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44037509 , I actually did, just for kicks.