Agreed, Magrathea would be the best section for it.
I did setup https://github.com/vogonsorg for vogons for tracking and hopefully fixing OS compatibility issues with software to try to keep things in one place if anyone wants to do so.

Here are some previous threads:
Re: DOS Development Forum?
Re: Request for 3 NEW forum categories.

"Shameless plug" as I'm the main admin there: Several DOS developers hang out at the DOS ain't dead forum.

I'm also very interested in this, having a retrodev section would be awesome.

Yes I’d like this as well.

Unless it'll be actively moderated, I dunno... It'll be a lot of 'is dead?' necrobumps with no impulsive controls of entitlement down the line. Release Announcements already kind of works for this with deprecated release threads locked from bumping.

Are you sure we are talking about the same thing? From what I understand from Hamby, this new section should be about programmers talking about programming new stuff for new old machines. No release announcements.

That's it, only dev talks. Sometimes is hard to find information on some programming topics (for example using EGA tricks, or programming sound cards), having all those posts inside a developers section would be much better.

Maybe like a Vogons Drivers, but software. I really like to download my newest FastDOOM and HWINFO and any new stuff from same place. It is just a sugestion.

as I said in other thread, there is a good programming section on vcfed.. lots of knowledgable people there too..

here

BloodyCactus wrote on 2022-10-26, 12:18:

as I said in other thread, there is a good programming section on vcfed.. lots of knowledgable people there too..

here

But people don't want to go to another forum, they want to talk here.

ldeveraux wrote on 2022-10-26, 13:14:

BloodyCactus wrote on 2022-10-26, 12:18:

as I said in other thread, there is a good programming section on vcfed.. lots of knowledgable people there too..

here

But people don't want to go to another forum, they want to talk here.

I feel the same. The vcfed is awesome, but feels also a bit too elitist, imho.
I for one feel kind of misplaced there, also partly since I'm a bit too chatty by nature.
Like a CB radio dude who's on a ham radio forum.
Vcfed is great for people who know what they're doing or talking about, though.

From what I see now, VCFED seems to welcome the really vintage systems. AFAIK talking about things ranging from Pentium 2 to the end of the Windows XP-era, is not a good fit there.

https://msfn.org/board/forum/34-windows-xp/ is a reasonable place for the latter. But anything programming related gets buried between non-programming topics.
(PS, I do remember a year ago it was: either Donate or MSFN shuts down next month. And I think another such forum actually closed around that time. All fair enough for the guy hosting MSFN, but it is another aspect to keep in mind )

There is Dosfreak's recent effort in creating and populating https://github.com/vogonsorg . Very useful. Great for some purposes, but not all.

Recently I made lots of notes regarding backwards compatibility of programming libraries etc., which I can imagine would benefit the a few people with similar interests. Saving them the hassle. And also invite other peoples' ideas. But have no idea yet, where to post such...

I've struggled with putting information in a wiki. I think my pain point is I want the data to also be easily accessible offline without having to jump through hoops.There is a wiki section for each repo in github so that should be exportable via git. I've always tended to use my folder structure on my server and dump txt files in the folders and then of course my compatibility spreadsheet, but storing on github and exporting may work as long as it can be certain the data didn't change in a way you didn't want it too....

I also don't like putting alot of the data I've spent alot of time accumulating into the hands of someone else when you can't export it and use it offline or elsewhere easily so github wiki might be the best bet.

As for MSFN there isn't much traffic nowadays and the mods are not very good so best not to start anything there, IMO.

I wouldn't mind a more active forum for retro development. Being able to ask more experienced programmers some questions when I get stumped would be really helpful. I've tried using Stack Overflow but they some a tad elitist and hostile toward n00bs like me.

OzzFan wrote on 2022-10-27, 22:00:

I've tried using Stack Overflow but they some a tad elitist and hostile toward n00bs like me.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/. Much more friendly and gets the occasional 'retro' programming question (lots of people in the know). Very generalised though and much more formal than a forum like here.

spiroyster wrote on 2022-10-27, 22:27:

OzzFan wrote on 2022-10-27, 22:00:

I've tried using Stack Overflow but they some a tad elitist and hostile toward n00bs like me.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/. Much more friendly and gets the occasional 'retro' programming question (lots of people in the know). Very generalised though and much more formal than a forum like here.

Thanks! I'll check it out. And damn, I need to check my spelling before I post!

ldeveraux wrote on 2022-10-26, 13:14:

BloodyCactus wrote on 2022-10-26, 12:18:

as I said in other thread, there is a good programming section on vcfed.. lots of knowledgable people there too..

here

But people don't want to go to another forum, they want to talk here.

exactly this, other forums are other forums and to be frank those forums tend to be so slow (partly because they split the already limited pool of interested people between them) that they are on the verge of disappearing

vogons is a lively forum and development is a cross-over interest

however this thread, and other similarly short ones on vogons, suggests that even here the momentum is perhaps not sufficient

If vogons.org disappears some day, all content is gone. (I didn't check archive.org.)
So it's probably better to split knowledge between forums, although registering account after account for the different forums is inconvenient.
"Federation" and "Fediverse" spring to my mind. Hubzilla supports forums, but I never tried.

I've seen this topic has come up multiple times here on Vogons over the past few years, and it never seems to get a huge amount of traction. Which, as someone who enjoys retro software development, disappoints me. But I have to admit that retro software development is a bit of a "niche within a niche" and so it makes sense.

Just for myself, I'd love such a dedicated forum for these topics. I'm aware of a couple of others (that have all already been mentioned in this topic so far) but none of them are super active which definitely suggests there aren't a ton of people interested.