I spent a fair bit of my career in that sort of environment writing embedded software on MSDOS. Have fond memories of that but I wonder if I re-created that today would I be able to mentally cope? Might be the technology equivalent of becoming a monk in remote Tibet with the same needed commitment and rewards.

A younger self used to look forward to the latest (paper) shareware catalogue arriving by (snail) mail, posting back the order form and waiting for the floppies to arrive. True story :-)