I wouldn't paint with such a broad brush. I've recently gotten way into retrocomputing, DOS included, I absolutely lived through that era. I spent my formative computing years in the early to mid 90s deep in DOS, mostly playing games, watching demos, listening to and writing tracker music, and doing pretty rudimentary C/C++ programming.
At the beginning of this year, I built an AMD K6 machine, got my Gravis Ultrasound card working again (which involved ordering a replacement mixer chip from China), and have had an absolutely wonderful time reliving my early computing experiences. And yes, that also includes fiddling with IRQ settings, maximizing low DOS memory, etc. Would I do day-to-day work in this kind of environment? Hell no! But it's a really fun distraction.
At the beginning of this year, I built an AMD K6 machine, got my Gravis Ultrasound card working again (which involved ordering a replacement mixer chip from China), and have had an absolutely wonderful time reliving my early computing experiences. And yes, that also includes fiddling with IRQ settings, maximizing low DOS memory, etc. Would I do day-to-day work in this kind of environment? Hell no! But it's a really fun distraction.