MS-DOS Editor
Shares rank 47 of 56 text editors by recommenders
Faithful offline recreation of the classic MS-DOS edit.com editor, free, recommended for its nostalgic look and simple feel. Critics want the original blinking underscore cursor.
Faithful offline recreation of the classic MS-DOS edit.com editor, free, recommended for its nostalgic look and simple feel. Critics want the original blinking underscore cursor.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Nostalgic, comfortable classic DOS feel
“An undersold feature of the old MS DOS editor (which was pretty nice) was that its command was ...edit.”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto” “QuickBasic/QBasic/edit.com darkish blue background and grey text was just damn comfortable”
Comment from 17 Jan 2026 in “Light Mode InFFFFFFlation” Better than later Windows editors
“It would have been immensely better if they'd just ported the old MS-DOS EDIT / QBASIC over to Windows.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown” “MS-DOS edit.com was honestly a much better experience.”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Cursor should be blinking underscore
“you really need to use the proper horizontal blinking underscore for the cursor”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: A faithful offline recreation of the classic MS-DOS Editor”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| MS-DOS EditorThis page | 5 | 2 | 71% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“An undersold feature of the old MS DOS editor (which was pretty nice) was that its command was ...edit.”
“JOE was like edit but also way better”
“you really need to use the proper horizontal blinking underscore for the cursor”
“MS-DOS edit.com was honestly a much better experience.”
“You lost two more lines of valuable code space!”
“It would have been immensely better if they'd just ported the old MS-DOS EDIT / QBASIC over to Windows.”
“QuickBasic/QBasic/edit.com darkish blue background and grey text was just damn comfortable”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.