alt Hacker NewsAuthor here, and thanks for reading. I'm glad to hear stories from a developer POV about those days. It's interesting uncovering subtle interface changes as I investigate various applications. It makes sense to me to not use Return for fields, especially when fields could gradually accommodate longer and longer blocks of text. Being able to naturally type multiple paragraphs, say for a "Notes" field in a database, would make sense.
Yes, it makes sense when viewed like that, and was probably a necessary change.
DOS chose Enter though because in those days mist data capture was numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. Data capturers could track the left hand down the column (so keeping place on yhe paper) any type with the right. Enter is right there in the keypad so only one hand needed.
Switching to Tab means 2 hands needed on the keyboard, so difficult to keep track on the paper.
Typically also, on DOS screens there was very little multi-line entry. Addresses were multiple entry fields, and so on. Tab was pretty much not used (outside of word processing).
If I went back now, to design the standard keyboard, I'd add dedicated "Next" and "Previous" buttons on the numeric keypad. No need for Enter there.
But that's design with a lot of hindsight...