Comment by 1313ed01

There is 16-bit DOS support in Free Pascal these days (yes, added long after 32-bit DOS support). That makes it easier to get a pointer to video memory. Makes other things less easy.

Also some (more) free (open source) 16-bit C-compilers now, like the ia16 gcc port and Microsoft's C compiler included in the MS-DOS repo on GitHub.

Not that 32-bit extenders do not come with some advantages, but I enjoy the simplicity of 16-bit.