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Comment by thorum | Hacker News Reader

You could probably get this running in a browser via emulation with one of those JavaScript DOS clones.

From there, you could wrap it in an Electron window and write some nodejs glue code to let it interface with hardware and the file system.

That would make it possible to rig up some kind of cloud storage for the database files and maybe start to think about getting it running on phones with React Native.

You could sell the iOS app for a small price like $20, or a subscription model with in app purchases. That would help to fund a redesign of the website to a more modern single page app approach.

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Or, y'know, leave it as it is. As DOS app it is available almost instantly from boot and it's designed specifically for any PC, even ones that are over 30 years old. It's probably faster than any rich GUI version. It's also FREE. It looks like it does what it says on the tin, and for many people, that's all that is important.

There are MANY phone POS apps. I do not see why this POS app needs to be re-vectored to also run on phones. I don't want to be ageist about this, but just because something is old, that doesn't mean it's no longer useful.

I think you missed the joke!

It doesn't read like a joke, nor does it have a /s tag.

Eh, it reads like obvious sarcasm to me, but I am British. There is a stereotype of Americans that they don't "get" sarcasm, and this does seem to come up frequently on HN :)

I'm British, fyi.

To me, at least, it reads as blatant satire.

The fact I, or most people, can't tell whether this is a sarcastic comment or not says a lot about the state of the software industry at the moment...

I'm not sure whether this comment is sarcastic or not, which is sad.

People writing comments on Adderall makes this even more difficult

Pretty certain parent commenter is fully aware of what they're doing. :) It's a masterpiece

(at least, I hope they're fully aware!)

Beautiful. I had my suspicions with the first sentence, but it's the last paragraph that really gives you away.

I am disappointed he didn't include ads and Facebook integration.

The real joke is that running this in DOSBox in JavaScript in Electron in a VM etc. etc. would probably still be an order of magnitude faster and more efficient for a trained user than half the [web] apps that would like to replace it.

Not everything should be wrapped in electron :)

Maybe the commenter was just being sarcastic. But I agree it's hard to tell.

Electron is not the hero we deserve, ...

This goes so completely against the spirit of what the author is doing that it would be amazing in its own right.

Thank you, you've put my blood pressure up.

You are describing how a few people make a healthy living in the terminal->web market!

It’s very kind of you to offer to do this for the author, but I suspect they would rather just not deal with the complexity of all that, given that they specialize in DOS. If you do succeed at doing this, I’m sure they will appreciate a 100% revenue donation though!

I'm so looking forward for batch files wrapped in Electron.

Leave it alone. It is perfect. ;)

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