A few weeks ago one of the members of CD-LUG mentioned he was moving and wanted to give away his collection of no longer needed computer books. I responded and picked up close to 200 books. Of these I'm keeping about a third with the rest going to charity (thanks Jim). Also given to me was a big bag of old Dr. Dobb's Journals; I've been reading them over (I'd seen many of them originally) and I thought I'd comment on dear departed Dr. Dobbs.
First of all to have a no nonsense general coverage software magazine out there on the news stands was quite something. Looking at the annual statements it looks like their circulation was about 150K. When you consider that there are 300M people in America and how pervasive software is, you realize how tiny that number is. Oh well, the few, the proud and all that:) Here are some random thoughts from looking at all these back issues: - Verity Stob's humor column was excellent. She's a programmer from the UK, and if you've ever programmed anything you'd just love it. I wish she was still around. - Michael Swain's Programming Paradigms column was very good too. He'd been around forever and would riff on different tech topics from month to month. You always got the feeling that he "got it." - Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor was always a trip. I remember years ago, when I'd spend entire weekends rebuilding various Windows boxes that my wife, kids, or friends screwed up, not finding his endless experiments interesting or entertaining (because it hurt too much), but looking back I now realize he really put a voice to all of use who have devoted hours and sweat to just get stuff that should work, stuff that we paid good money for, to work. I'm sure if you're reading this you know what I mean. - MHV-LUG's own Ed Nisley's Embedded Systems column was really great, and stands the test of time, too. Where else at the time could you find out so much about the arcane world of embedded systems, even if you were involved with computers and software? Considering how many embedded systems we all deal with on a daily basis, from the traffic light sensors to vending machines and who knows what else, this column is sorely missed.Very entertaining. Jon Erickson did a good job with the mag, no doubt about it,but something went wrong and they're no longer around (although an enterprise slanted electronic version is available at drdobbs.com). Because I liked it and I wish it was still around I'll offer the following Monday Morning Quarterback suggestions on what may have helped: 1) I think I would have put something in there for beginners or newbies or whatever, to not scare them away; maybe devote a page for a little "Hello World" program in a different language each month and the language basics, or just take one algorithm, like a bubble sort, and go over the basics of it. This way you'd have something for everyone, not just experienced computer scientists and programmers. 2) Some of the articles were so dense, detailed, and abstract, that unless you were working in that area or a member of IEEE or something like that you could barely understand it. The thing is these days you are often forced to make one area your focus, so when you see something in detail in another area it may not mean much to you. Where this really bit them was in their monthly special issues, ie, if you were a Pascal programmer and that issue was Java or vice-versa you were not going to get too much out of it. 3) I think I would have made it a little bit more "hands on", like the old Byte magazine, maybe combining a little hardware hacking to round it out a bit, like we do with Arduino now. We all love to play with software but sometimes you want some flashing lights, servos, etc. 4) It used to be when you programmed you wrote the whole thing, but now, oftentimes you're just slinging together other stuff, or dragging and dropping widgets onto a form. Maybe it's not as "romantic" as it used to be, when you had to do it all yourself, staying up all night on diet cokes and doritos until it worked. Could it be, with programming the way it is now, there's no room for something like Dr. Dobb's anymore? Maybe the whole Dr. Dobb's paradigm got out-sourced, like so many coders did :) Until getting this old stack of Dr. -- Frank L. "Cranky Frankie" Palmeri Risible Riding Raconteur & Writer " . . . and the extended forecast, until you come back to me, baby, is high tonight, low tomorrow, and precipitation is expected." - Tom Waits, "Emotional Weather Report" _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Sep 7 - DIY 3D Printing and the Makerbot Thing-o-Matic Oct 5 - Distributed Authentication Systems Nov 2 - Nov 2011
