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Last month, Microsoft released a modern remake of its classic MS-DOS Editor, bringing back a piece of computing history that first appeared in MS-DOS 5.0 back in 1991. The new open source tool, built with Rust and simply called "Edit," works on Windows, macOS, and—in a twist that would have seemed unlikely three decades ago—Linux.

The cross-platform availability has delighted longtime users who never expected to see Microsoft's text editor running on their preferred operating system. "30 years of waiting, and I can use MS Edit on Linux," wrote one Reddit user, capturing the nostalgic appeal of running a genuinely useful version of a Microsoft DOS utility on a Unix-like system.

The original MS-DOS Editor represented a major step forward for Microsoft's command-line text-editing capabilities at the time of its release. Before 1991, DOS users suffered through EDLIN, a line-based editor so primitive and user-hostile that many people resorted to typing "COPY CON filename.txt" and hoping for the best. MS-DOS Editor changed that by introducing concepts that seem basic today: a full-screen interface, mouse support, and pull-down menus you could actually navigate without memorizing cryptic commands.

And those cryptic commands persist today in some Linux editors, like Vim, a modal text editor where users must switch between different modes for editing versus navigating text, which famously confuses newcomers. "Many of you are probably familiar with the 'How do I exit vim?' meme," wrote Christopher Nguyen, a product manager on Microsoft's Windows Terminal team, in a blog post about Edit. "While it is relatively simple to learn the magic exit incantation, it's certainly not a coincidence that this often turns up as a stumbling block for new and old programmers."

Aside from ease of use, Microsoft's main reason for creating the new version of Edit stems from a peculiar gap in modern Windows. "What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows," writes Nguyen while referring to the command-line interface, or CLI. "32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS editor, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox."

So far, the development community seems to be giving Microsoft's new open source tool a mixed-to-positive reception. But the cross-platform nature of the new tool editor has already excited some developers. "Microsoft released a new terminal text editor! It's called Microsoft Edit, it's open source, it's tiny (about 250KB as a Rust binary) and it works cross-platform," wrote independent AI researcher Simon Willison on X on Saturday. "They built it for Windows 11 - I've been trying it out on my Mac and it's a nice alternative to Vim or nano."

Linux users can download Edit from the project's GitHub releases page or install it through an unofficial snap package. Oh, and if you're a fan of the vintage editor and crave a 16-bit text-mode for your retro machine that actually runs MS-DOS, you can download a copy on the Internet Archive.

When MS-DOS 5.0 launched in 1991, the computing world looked vastly different from today. A typical PC might include a 286 or 386 processor, a mere 4MB of RAM was considered wildly generous, and the Internet remained largely an academic curiosity. Windows 3.0 had arrived the year before, but MS-DOS still ruled desktop computing on IBM PC clones. For millions of users, MS-DOS Editor became their first introduction to "modern" text editing—a stepping stone between the command-line era and the graphical interfaces that would soon dominate.

Looking back to when MS-DOS Editor debuted, it's interesting to learn that the original editor shipped in an unusual form. According to Wikipedia, EDIT.COM was actually just a stub that launched the QBasic programming language editor in a different mode—a clever way to reuse existing code while providing a more approachable text-editing experience. Later versions of EDIT.COM became standalone programs as Microsoft phased out QBasic from Windows distributions.

At 250KB, the new Edit maintains the lightweight philosophy of its predecessor while adding features the original couldn't dream of: Unicode support, regular expressions, and the ability to handle gigabyte-sized files. The original editor was limited to files smaller than 300KB depending on available conventional memory—a constraint that seems quaint in an era of terabyte storage. But the web publication OMG! Ubuntu found that the modern Edit not only "works great on Ubuntu" but noted its speed when handling gigabyte-sized documents.

At a time when AI coding assistants and sophisticated IDEs dominate software development, it's fun to think that we may be on the verge of a renaissance in appreciation for simple, fast tools that just work. After all, some tasks are timeless. The fact that Microsoft's 1991 design philosophy from MS-DOS translates so well to 2025 suggests that most fundamental aspects of text editing haven't changed much despite 34 years of tech evolution.

Katie Tanner, a human resource consultant in Utah, knew the job would be popular: It was fully remote, was at a tech company and required only three years of experience.

But she was still shocked by the response on LinkedIn. After 12 hours, 400 applications had been submitted. By 24, there were 600. A few days later, there were more than 1,200, at which point she removed the post. Three months later, she’s still whittling down candidates.

“It’s crazy,” she said. “You just get inundated.”

The number of applications submitted on LinkedIn has surged more than 45 percent in the past year. The platform is clocking an average of 11,000 applications per minute, and generative artificial intelligence tools are contributing to the deluge.

With a simple prompt, ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, will insert every keyword from a job description into a résumé. Some candidates are going a step further, paying for A.I. agents that can autonomously find jobs and apply on their behalf. Recruiters say it’s getting harder to tell who is genuinely qualified or interested, and many of the résumés look suspiciously similar.

One popular method for navigating the surge? Automatic chat or video interviews, sometimes conducted by AI. Chipotle’s chief executive, Scott Boatwright, said at a conference this month that its AI chatbot screening and scheduling tool (named Ava Cado) had reduced hiring time by 75 percent.

HireVue, a popular AI video interview platform, offers recruiters an option to have AI assess responses and rank candidates.

But candidates can also use AI to cheat in these interviews, and some companies have added more automated skill assessments early in the hiring process. For example, HireVue offers AI-powered games to gauge abilities like pattern recognition and working memory, and a virtual “tryout” that tests emotional intelligence or skills like counting change. Sometimes, Lee said, “we end up with an AI versus AI type of situation.”

In January, the Justice Department announced indictments in a scheme to place North Korean nationals in IT roles working remotely at U.S. companies. Emi Chiba, a human resource technology analyst at Gartner, told DealBook that reports of candidates who used fake identities had been “growing and growing and growing.”

A report that Ms. Chiba published with other Gartner analysts in April ballparked that by 2028, about one in four job applicants could be made up. Among its recommendations was that companies deploy more sophisticated identity-verification software.

To address the problem, LinkedIn recently added tools to help both candidates and recruiters narrow their focus, including an AI agent, introduced in October, that can write follow-up messages, conduct screening chats with candidates, suggest top applicants and search for potential hires using natural language.

A feature that shows potential applicants how well their qualifications match up with a job description, which LinkedIn introduced to premium subscribers in January, reduced the rate at which they apply to “low match” jobs by 10 percent, according to the company.

Concerns that using AI in hiring can introduce bias have led to lawsuits and a patchwork of state legislation. The European Union’s AI Act classifies hiring under its high-risk category, with the most stringent restrictions, and while no U.S. federal law specifically addresses AI use in hiring, general antidiscrimination laws can potentially come into play if the result of any process is discrimination.

“You’re not allowed to discriminate, and of course most employers are trying not to discriminate, but easier said than done,” said Marcia Goodman, a partner at Mayer Brown who primarily represents employers.

A lawsuit claiming Workday’s AI algorithm discriminated based on age is being allowed to proceed as a collective action, and could potentially include millions of disappointed job seekers.

The problem is less that candidates are using AI — a skill many employers say they want — than it is that they’re being sloppy. Alexa Marciano, the managing director of Syndicatebleu, a recruiting agency, said job seekers were reacting to recruiters’ use of automated screening. “It’s really frustrating for the candidates because they spend all this time creating very catered cover letters, very catered résumés,” she said.

Jeremy Schifeling, a career coach who regularly conducts technology-focused job-search training at universities, said he could see this back-and-forth going on for a while. “As students get more desperate, they say, ‘Well, I have no choice but to up the ante with these paid tools to automate everything.’ And I’m sure the recruiters are going to raise the bar again.”

He argues the endgame will be authenticity from both sides. But, he said, “I do think that a lot of people are going to waste a lot of time, a lot of processing power, a lot of money until we reach that realization.”