For one, the inline assembly syntax wasn't exactly the same. When I was a kid I had a DOS game programming book, the worst thing about it was that it came with

For one, the inline assembly syntax wasn't exactly the same. When I was a kid I had a DOS game programming book, the worst thing about it was that it came with the Microsoft C compiler. EVERYONE used Borland back then. So most of the sample code and shit you would find on the AOL forums or BBS's wouldn't work. Sure, if you knew assembly and your compiler it was probably trivial to get it working. Same goes for functions to call interrupts and things like that.