I was a founder, with Bob Albrecht, of the People's Computer Company and was the creator of Dr. Dobb's Journal. It is very sad to learn of the "sunset" of DDJ. I take some solace that DDJ survived longer than most of the other serious personal computing journals and continues to be relevant today. I am proud of the impact DDJ and PCC have had on our society. I am grateful for the contributions of the many DDJ authors and editors. Jim Warren, the first DDJ editor deserves special recognition, as does Bob Albrecht whose vision and insight guided PCC.
It's possible to keep Dr. Dobbs alive by factory resetting back to the startup mode. Announce here some share in DDJ to an additional tech cofounder with some ideas to pivot the Dr. Dobbs. Apply to YC.
Here's my offer: I'll return DDJ into a blogger community focused on newer tech (Ruby/JS/Python/Rust/Go/Closure/Scala) with the same writing pleasure to "medium" or "svbtle". A lot of 20years old would love to write under the brand of DDJ. I ask 20% share only and as a cofounder have Andrew.
I think its fair to say you contributed to the construction of a culturally significant form of contemporary literature, whose affects can be traced throughout modern humanity. DDJ was the driving force behind a lot of free thought, about thought, and about how to apply thought to machines, and thus the universe, and for this fact I thank you, also, for the impact DDJ had on my life over decades of computing.
Andrew, it's been an honor and a privilege to be able to write for Dr. Dobb's, the greatest of the programming magazines. Dr. Dobb's has been an enormously positive influence on the industry. I am very sad to see the end of the era.
Thank you and Deirdre and the rest of the DDJ staff for your awesome work!
A few years ago, that would be 20 or so, a friend loaned me a CD with all the magazine text from inception until that time. Is there any chance for a final "all of ddj" DVD?
It sounds like there was no vetting of alternative monetization strategies for the website. I say this because it looks like the site is still running direct-to-advertiser deals, when they could open their remnant inventory up to auction systems via an SSP and tie in yield optimization strategies with their sales team.
If the site has high quality traffic and 10MM pv/month they shouldn't be closing the doors. Based on a 5 minute look at the website and some of the ads seems like the site is restricting its ad revenue to software industry vendors when they could open it up to the rest of the advertising world that wants to pay to serve an in-view ad to a real person with a software engineer's salary.
Dr. Dobb's was such an integral part of my education that I feel like I've failed you in some way. I hope that the staff consider transfer their archives to archive.org.
I bought it every month since the early 90's until it went digital. Alongside Computer Shopper UK edition and The C User's Journal (latter The C/C++ User's Journal), Dr Dobbs was my door to the computing world.
In a country where BBS were too expensive for most families and the Internet was yet to come, I waited religiously for the next issue delivery.
Just to say thanks! I am 34 and and live in Brazil. The magazine was really expensive here, more than USD 30 per issue but still I got all issues. It helped me make my career path and I still cherish them a lot.
Not a question, just saying thanks. Your articles in the 1990s on VGA's modeX were the basis for a long-time obsession of mine: writing VGA graphic drivers to support better ways to display fractals. My college senior thesis was based on it.
Since then, Dr. Dobbs has been the shining example of highly technical material.
Presumably UBM is willing to sell the brand? I can't say I'm terribly familiar with Dr Dobb's but it seems a terrible shame and quite inefficient that something in such high demand can't find a way to survive. Feels like there's a win-win situation hidden in the world somewhere that needs uncovered.
I'm very sorry to see it go. A nice collection of Dr. Dobb's magazines is an incredible personal resource. Any chance of donating a digital collection of the magazine to archive.org for posterity?
Will another dvd or download of the full content be made available? It's been quite some time since the last and it would make a nice parting gift to buy.
I've found Dr. Dobb's hugely useful over the years. I suspect mostly as a result of search queries; as I hadn't realised what a formidable team of contributors you had until this post. Sorry to see it go, and thank you!
Edit: I guess there's a lesson to be learned here, to try to be conscious of the things I use (I wasn't, really) and do what I can to support them.
I'm curious to know - have you explored other forms of revenue like sponsored content. For instance there is a great deal of paid software out there and a great number of companies create infrastructure for complex software out there like (e.g. Hadoop). Today companies more than ever are pouring their advertising budgets into marketing budgets to create content around their brands... this could perhaps let you stay on mission creating valuable content for the most difficult software while providing a revenue source. I'm throwing out there what I'm sure you have already considered, but I hate to see a good thing go!
Under what company / trade name will you be operating your analyst business and what will your focus be? Will you be running a subscription-style analyst business or just writing white papers for hire?
Since Dr. Dobb's has some amount of brand recognition, would it be possible to capitalize on that? For example, maybe come out with a line of authoritative technical books that are Dr. Dobb's branded, that would end up having the same recognition as O'reilly's nutshell books? Then the website / magazine would end up functioning as a loss leader to promote the book series (or other ventures).
First of all, I'd like to offer my appreciation to the Dr. Dobb's staff, along with Andrew Binstock (I thoroughly enjoyed and found myself nodding my head at articles such as "Just Let Me Code"[1]).
I still have some of the magazines from 1994 floating around. It's amazing how nostalgic they are now—but the pouring back over those magazines brings me back to my younger days where computers were more mysterious, and creating things was more magical.
Dr Dobbs provided a great service. They offered informative articles on not only programming, but also on the user experience, design, IDEs, math, and the whole "programmer" gamut—and they did such a wide spread without losing quality. I do wish you could name an alternative to this, but I find myself coming up empty, as well.
The same as you mentioned in regards to events, these types of information are now spread througout multiple sites: HN for general 'tech' news, MOOCs for programming, sometimes Reddit for actual helpful information. I look forward to seeing if people will try to fill this gap of an all-in-one hub, that also has quite knowledgeable authors.
I do wonder, this article mentions Dr Dobbs staying constant; constant in delivering quality articles, constant in its design, and so forth. Would you say this is an issue of not adapting to current trends (or "with the times")? It seemed [to me] that the move from print to digital was a late move that could have been done in a better way. While the content is great, I've ironically found the online site not as engaging as having the print copies in hand. I do not know many people who subscribe to online only publications, and of the ones I do know, they usually will go through a service such as Amazon.
Also, while I understand the anecdote about ad revenue and clicking, it does bring up a fair point. I do not know many tech saavy people who knowingly click on advertisements (if they're not blocked, to begin with). In fact, as a technician at an old job, we were told to warn the general public about what sites they visit, and to make sure they're not clicking on ads, as they might be "unscrupulous" [former manager's words].
Could this offer an opportunity for a company to come along and create and display advertisements that the majority of people will know are safe? While Googles ads have their name displayed, I know many people who feel "odd" seeing text ads, and feel they're trying to trick them. There must be a better way to make the user feel comfortable clicking, as well as letting them know the content and site they will go to are safe. Flash ads, and a mile long URL being pointed to are not going to do it.
What a sad, sad day. I grew up reading Dr. Dobb's, and learned a lot from it. Still remember some of the articles, more than 20 years later.
I used to buy the paper magazine every month. There was only one newsstand that would sell it, in a city 25 miles away from where I lived. It was worth it every time.
The only future for journalism might be reader revenue. Without it, everyone in this field were in danger of becoming a public relations or advertising company disguised as journalism.
I'm an editor at Programmer Magazine in China (http://special.csdn.net/programmercovers/), as a coincidence, after 14 years operation, we just release the last print issue last week and withdrawal towards the electronic version only. I think we share the similar experience and feeling about how the tech medias evolved recently.
But media is still a very active field, if you have read the New York Times innovation report that leaked earlier this year, you may get a mixed feeling that with the risks, there are still opportunities to build an independent site with in-depth articles, code, algorithms, and reliable product reviews, which quality media should have.
But unfortunately, most decisions were not made by the ones who love this career, have ability and skill to lead the change, and do not fear to face the risks.
We need more serious competition in the Ad market, someone that interrupts the status quo like Uber did for taxi business [and Google Ads previously did]. Let website owners host the Ads on their web server (no 3rd party scripts; would help also with noscript/adblock).
Today Google Ads and Amazon Referral with the new greatly reduced payments are the new problem. IMO pay per click (PPC) is a big problem (1. click fraud, 2. most people don't click anyway but seeing it still influence by seeing it, 3. adblock/noscript blocks 3rd-party scripts) and it got popular as Google introduced it in AdWords in 2002. Til 2002, cost per thousand impression (CPI) and cost per mille (CPM) where most used. CPI/CPM are the better model for website owners and company that run Ad-campaigns; PPC for Google an other ad networks.
Paywalls are not the answer, the WWW is successful because it is open.
Learn from the history: Microsoft's MSN started as serious competitor to WWW, and it was a fiasco in 1995. (I mean the original The Microsoft Network that came with Win95: http://winsupersite.com/windows-live/msn-inside-story (incl. photos)). Bill Gates even completely rewrote his "The Road Ahead" book half a year later - I have both editions, and almost every page has different wordings (MS Network, Information Highway -> Internet/WWW)
I remember when I was a 10-year-old kid and had just got my first computer, someone told me that if I really wanted to learn to program, I should get a subscription to Dr. Dobb's and read all the articles. So my dad dutifully got me a subscription and I read all the articles. A lot of it was over my head - there was a lot of C and assembly, a lot of optimized graphics or numerics algorithms - but still, it was one of the few sources of programming tips back then. There was no WWW, so you learned by buying reference books, magazines, playing around with the computer and seeing what happens, or getting the official reference documentation from the manufacturer.
I think that what killed Dr. Dobbs is ultimately that the Internet sparked a huge availability of quality programming info online, which drove the price of this info through the floor. I've spent my morning Googling obscure corner-cases for Django form validation; there are dozens of pages freely available in the official docs, StackOverflow, GitHub, blogs, etc. It's hard to compete with free.
this is sad news. Dr. Dobb's was always a beacon in the computer and software publication landscape, one I grew up with and I've cherished till today.
I still remember the moments of pride and the feeling of recognition when we've seen the first positive reviews of our work in Dr Dobb's many years ago - something that could only be achieved by the high standing and excellent editorial work of the magazine's team and efforts.
While it might be understandable from a financial or commercial point of view that it's better to stop now than later, hopefully there will be an agreement found with one of the big data center providers (IBM, MS, Google, AWS)to keep the current site online and the archives open for the many who certainly will find inspiration and guidance in much of what had been written in Dr Dobb's during almost 40 years.
DDJ and CUJ (C User's Journal) were two very good magazines that I used to read a lot. BYTE (more so in its earlier years) was another one on the same lines. Can't forget some of the regular contributors to BYTE, for example (and I don't mean just Jerry Pournelle, though his column was entertaining too). Heck, I used to read Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar column out of interest, even though I was not into electronics. So well done, the articles, the photos, etc. I still remember, in one of the first BYTE issues that I read, a very good introduction to Huffman coding by Jonathan Amsterdam. And so many other such good articles, in all three of those magazines ...
They can pry my stack of paper magazines from my cold, dead hands.
Seriously now, I read Abrash's stuff on Dr Dobb's, and it was that magazine (above all others) that instilled in me the idea that coding was above and beyond the drudgery we waded through in college - that it was an art form that emerged from systematic thought process and a deep understanding of how bend technology to your will.
I just hope they don't dilute the brand -- I can see someone having the bright idea of setting up a Programming 101 kind of site under that name a couple of years down the road, and really hope someone, somewhere, somewhen, will pick up the torch and make sure it stays associated with "true masters" (if there is such a thing).
When I was still a boy, I would run down to the local pharmacy nearly weekly and eagerly check the magazine rack for new copies of Dr. Dobb's Journal. It was the main pipe through which I learned about the beautiful and intricate world of programming.
I tossed all those magazines in a fit of purging when I was leaving home and heading to college. There may be a handful still in some storage box.
It was at the same time first visited Sweden, where I now live, and I remember the thrill of seeing Dr. Dobb's, with my article, on the newsstand in this foreign land.
Now I read blogs and HN links to some of the things I once got from Dr. Dobb's, that newsstand no longer exists, and neither is Dr. Dobb's.
Programming has changed substantially from when I first started. It used to be I'd have to wait for a ride to the local mall or book store from my parents, and then quickly wade through the programming books looking for one or two to purchase and thereby expand my knowledge.
I remember when I bought The Waite Group's Turbo-C Bible that came out in 1988. I practically had the thing memorized.
Today, my IDE does a tremendous job of guessing what I'm trying to do. Google does great work at telling me what's causing error messages that occur while I'm debugging. It can also give me example code of almost exactly what I'm trying to do in the exact language I'm trying to do it in (and probably a dozen other languages to boot).
We seem to have gone from an era requiring pre-knowledge programming to an era allowing just-in-time-knowledge programming. Dr. Dobbs was a great part of the old era and I'm sad to see it go.
What I found most interesting from this post was revenue. Here is a respected brand, with reasonable amounts of traffic, and multiple employees (Andrew mentioned himself and a sales team), that is doing < $1M in revenue. Even 4 years ago, they were doing ~$3M in revenue.
This is the reality of most businesses. Yes, most people know they won't be a Facebook or a Instagram, but those insanely high numbers have skewed what "success" means in a lot of people's minds. 99.999% of businesses don't making tens of millions of dollars with a handful of 20-somethings.
Success in business is surviving for a non-trivial amount of time
I am clueless about the right etiquette, but can anyone share some high quality publications in the similar vein? Mainly interested in "head content" that is not a book, but a set of relevant, contemporary articles around our trade.
This makes me sad. First we lost Byte. Now we've lost Dr Dobbs. The last of the great hacker institutions is gone. Supplanted by the amorphous blob of sketchy information that is the Internet.
I've never read Dr. Dobbs regularly, but often when struggling with thorny issues I've come across helpful articles (in particular a series by Herb Sutter a few years back really helped).
This is sad news - I should have supported it better when it existed - I'll miss it when it is gone!
Over the years I've enjoyed Dr Dobbs, but like most magazines they have become less and less relevant with google+stackoverflow+wikipedia. Over the years Dr Dobbs has added things to my repertoire of software knowledge, but I have to say Wikipedia has done more in recent years.
I can't think of a single magazine I've seen in recent years.
I know of two main ways to monetize the writing of good tech articles -- conferences and consulting. Consulting happens to be much more enjoyable for me than conferences, so that's the option I chose.
By way of contrast, I started DBMS2 in 2005, and at no point did I come close to thinking of a viable-seeming advertising-based business model.
Confused. Web server cost pennies. Writers, heck lots would do it for the press. Publishing a magazine? There are tens of thousands of millennials just in SF alone that have net worth in the millions, and would love to be involved. Did you cast the net?
Somewhere late in high school my father started bringing home copies of Dr. Dobb's and I think around 11th grade -- (1993?) I was given my own subscription. I was lucky if I could understand 10% of what was written, but I would devour it -- and it provided a definite different perspective to me than the pop magazines I had been reading Compute! and many years before, Run! -- I have fond memories of the publication....I just have no longer had time to read it...sorry to see it go. Thanks for all the great content.
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of professional developer voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
I've read Dr. Dobb's for 30+ years, and it helped me move from a coder to programmer/developer to software engineer--while still retaining the hacker spirit.
Each month, Dr. Dobb's, Sys Admin, et al were on my bookstore shopping list, to be read and re-read over the next month.
[+] [-] drallison|11 years ago|reply
Dennis Allison
[+] [-] diminish|11 years ago|reply
Here's my offer: I'll return DDJ into a blogger community focused on newer tech (Ruby/JS/Python/Rust/Go/Closure/Scala) with the same writing pleasure to "medium" or "svbtle". A lot of 20years old would love to write under the brand of DDJ. I ask 20% share only and as a cofounder have Andrew.
Anyone has better ideas?
[+] [-] fit2rule|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewbinstock|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|11 years ago|reply
Thank you and Deirdre and the rest of the DDJ staff for your awesome work!
[+] [-] beagle3|11 years ago|reply
A few years ago, that would be 20 or so, a friend loaned me a CD with all the magazine text from inception until that time. Is there any chance for a final "all of ddj" DVD?
[+] [-] dtjones|11 years ago|reply
If the site has high quality traffic and 10MM pv/month they shouldn't be closing the doors. Based on a 5 minute look at the website and some of the ads seems like the site is restricting its ad revenue to software industry vendors when they could open it up to the rest of the advertising world that wants to pay to serve an in-view ad to a real person with a software engineer's salary.
[+] [-] logn|11 years ago|reply
At $300 per ad, you'd need about 800 ads a month to reach $3 mil/year. Achievable?
[+] [-] boo_radley|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelhoffman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|11 years ago|reply
I bought it every month since the early 90's until it went digital. Alongside Computer Shopper UK edition and The C User's Journal (latter The C/C++ User's Journal), Dr Dobbs was my door to the computing world.
In a country where BBS were too expensive for most families and the Internet was yet to come, I waited religiously for the next issue delivery.
[+] [-] soapdog|11 years ago|reply
Thanks a lot for the hard work!
[+] [-] drig|11 years ago|reply
Since then, Dr. Dobbs has been the shining example of highly technical material.
Thank you for everything your magazine meant.
[+] [-] lorddoig|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stefanmielke|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beached_whale|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkingston|11 years ago|reply
Edit: I guess there's a lesson to be learned here, to try to be conscious of the things I use (I wasn't, really) and do what I can to support them.
[+] [-] SandersAK|11 years ago|reply
I wonder if you could make enough revenue via crowdfunded support? Recurring subscriptions and one time contributions can really add up.
At Beacon, we helped Techdirt.com raise $70k to cover Net Neutrality full time.
I think your community is incredibly passionate and probably would cover what you need.
Email me ([email protected] if you're keen, we'd love to help (and give you a big discount on our cut).
cheers Adrian
[+] [-] otoburb|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whistlerbrk|11 years ago|reply
I'm curious to know - have you explored other forms of revenue like sponsored content. For instance there is a great deal of paid software out there and a great number of companies create infrastructure for complex software out there like (e.g. Hadoop). Today companies more than ever are pouring their advertising budgets into marketing budgets to create content around their brands... this could perhaps let you stay on mission creating valuable content for the most difficult software while providing a revenue source. I'm throwing out there what I'm sure you have already considered, but I hate to see a good thing go!
[+] [-] rexreed|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgeorge|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derekp7|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FrankenPC|11 years ago|reply
Thank you. Best of luck to you.
[+] [-] anw|11 years ago|reply
I still have some of the magazines from 1994 floating around. It's amazing how nostalgic they are now—but the pouring back over those magazines brings me back to my younger days where computers were more mysterious, and creating things was more magical.
Dr Dobbs provided a great service. They offered informative articles on not only programming, but also on the user experience, design, IDEs, math, and the whole "programmer" gamut—and they did such a wide spread without losing quality. I do wish you could name an alternative to this, but I find myself coming up empty, as well.
The same as you mentioned in regards to events, these types of information are now spread througout multiple sites: HN for general 'tech' news, MOOCs for programming, sometimes Reddit for actual helpful information. I look forward to seeing if people will try to fill this gap of an all-in-one hub, that also has quite knowledgeable authors.
I do wonder, this article mentions Dr Dobbs staying constant; constant in delivering quality articles, constant in its design, and so forth. Would you say this is an issue of not adapting to current trends (or "with the times")? It seemed [to me] that the move from print to digital was a late move that could have been done in a better way. While the content is great, I've ironically found the online site not as engaging as having the print copies in hand. I do not know many people who subscribe to online only publications, and of the ones I do know, they usually will go through a service such as Amazon.
Also, while I understand the anecdote about ad revenue and clicking, it does bring up a fair point. I do not know many tech saavy people who knowingly click on advertisements (if they're not blocked, to begin with). In fact, as a technician at an old job, we were told to warn the general public about what sites they visit, and to make sure they're not clicking on ads, as they might be "unscrupulous" [former manager's words].
Could this offer an opportunity for a company to come along and create and display advertisements that the majority of people will know are safe? While Googles ads have their name displayed, I know many people who feel "odd" seeing text ads, and feel they're trying to trick them. There must be a better way to make the user feel comfortable clicking, as well as letting them know the content and site they will go to are safe. Flash ads, and a mile long URL being pointed to are not going to do it.
[1] http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/just-let-me-code/240168735
[+] [-] guiambros|11 years ago|reply
I used to buy the paper magazine every month. There was only one newsstand that would sell it, in a city 25 miles away from where I lived. It was worth it every time.
It'll be dearly missed.
[+] [-] lispython|11 years ago|reply
I'm an editor at Programmer Magazine in China (http://special.csdn.net/programmercovers/), as a coincidence, after 14 years operation, we just release the last print issue last week and withdrawal towards the electronic version only. I think we share the similar experience and feeling about how the tech medias evolved recently.
But media is still a very active field, if you have read the New York Times innovation report that leaked earlier this year, you may get a mixed feeling that with the risks, there are still opportunities to build an independent site with in-depth articles, code, algorithms, and reliable product reviews, which quality media should have.
But unfortunately, most decisions were not made by the ones who love this career, have ability and skill to lead the change, and do not fear to face the risks.
[+] [-] frik|11 years ago|reply
Today Google Ads and Amazon Referral with the new greatly reduced payments are the new problem. IMO pay per click (PPC) is a big problem (1. click fraud, 2. most people don't click anyway but seeing it still influence by seeing it, 3. adblock/noscript blocks 3rd-party scripts) and it got popular as Google introduced it in AdWords in 2002. Til 2002, cost per thousand impression (CPI) and cost per mille (CPM) where most used. CPI/CPM are the better model for website owners and company that run Ad-campaigns; PPC for Google an other ad networks.
Paywalls are not the answer, the WWW is successful because it is open.
Learn from the history: Microsoft's MSN started as serious competitor to WWW, and it was a fiasco in 1995. (I mean the original The Microsoft Network that came with Win95: http://winsupersite.com/windows-live/msn-inside-story (incl. photos)). Bill Gates even completely rewrote his "The Road Ahead" book half a year later - I have both editions, and almost every page has different wordings (MS Network, Information Highway -> Internet/WWW)
[+] [-] Natsu|11 years ago|reply
We're rather far along down that road already, from what I can tell, and the place it leads terrifies me.
[+] [-] shawn-butler|11 years ago|reply
https://www.moviepass.com etc. I think even big chains like AMC are now offering subscriptions.
Maybe paywall is going to become less of a dirty word. Subscriber revenue/data is definitely more valuable & predictable.
[+] [-] joelthelion|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greyman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|11 years ago|reply
I think that what killed Dr. Dobbs is ultimately that the Internet sparked a huge availability of quality programming info online, which drove the price of this info through the floor. I've spent my morning Googling obscure corner-cases for Django form validation; there are dozens of pages freely available in the official docs, StackOverflow, GitHub, blogs, etc. It's hard to compete with free.
[+] [-] fpp|11 years ago|reply
this is sad news. Dr. Dobb's was always a beacon in the computer and software publication landscape, one I grew up with and I've cherished till today.
I still remember the moments of pride and the feeling of recognition when we've seen the first positive reviews of our work in Dr Dobb's many years ago - something that could only be achieved by the high standing and excellent editorial work of the magazine's team and efforts.
While it might be understandable from a financial or commercial point of view that it's better to stop now than later, hopefully there will be an agreement found with one of the big data center providers (IBM, MS, Google, AWS)to keep the current site online and the archives open for the many who certainly will find inspiration and guidance in much of what had been written in Dr Dobb's during almost 40 years.
[+] [-] vram22|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarmo|11 years ago|reply
Seriously now, I read Abrash's stuff on Dr Dobb's, and it was that magazine (above all others) that instilled in me the idea that coding was above and beyond the drudgery we waded through in college - that it was an art form that emerged from systematic thought process and a deep understanding of how bend technology to your will.
I just hope they don't dilute the brand -- I can see someone having the bright idea of setting up a Programming 101 kind of site under that name a couple of years down the road, and really hope someone, somewhere, somewhen, will pick up the torch and make sure it stays associated with "true masters" (if there is such a thing).
[+] [-] bdamm|11 years ago|reply
I tossed all those magazines in a fit of purging when I was leaving home and heading to college. There may be a handful still in some storage box.
Thanks, Dr. Dobb's.
[+] [-] dalke|11 years ago|reply
It was at the same time first visited Sweden, where I now live, and I remember the thrill of seeing Dr. Dobb's, with my article, on the newsstand in this foreign land.
Now I read blogs and HN links to some of the things I once got from Dr. Dobb's, that newsstand no longer exists, and neither is Dr. Dobb's.
Life is change. Thanks, Dr. Dobb's!
[+] [-] dpweb|11 years ago|reply
It's a shame I've read Dr. Dobbs for I don't know how long. They should sell to someone, keep it alive.
[+] [-] 300bps|11 years ago|reply
I remember when I bought The Waite Group's Turbo-C Bible that came out in 1988. I practically had the thing memorized.
Today, my IDE does a tremendous job of guessing what I'm trying to do. Google does great work at telling me what's causing error messages that occur while I'm debugging. It can also give me example code of almost exactly what I'm trying to do in the exact language I'm trying to do it in (and probably a dozen other languages to boot).
We seem to have gone from an era requiring pre-knowledge programming to an era allowing just-in-time-knowledge programming. Dr. Dobbs was a great part of the old era and I'm sad to see it go.
[+] [-] billyhoffman|11 years ago|reply
This is the reality of most businesses. Yes, most people know they won't be a Facebook or a Instagram, but those insanely high numbers have skewed what "success" means in a lot of people's minds. 99.999% of businesses don't making tens of millions of dollars with a handful of 20-somethings.
Success in business is surviving for a non-trivial amount of time
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201407/jason-fried/the-challenge...
[+] [-] ratbr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robert_tweed|11 years ago|reply
Change is inevitable, but it isn't always good.
[+] [-] jonquark|11 years ago|reply
This is sad news - I should have supported it better when it existed - I'll miss it when it is gone!
[+] [-] hnriot|11 years ago|reply
I can't think of a single magazine I've seen in recent years.
I still miss BYTE
[+] [-] CurtMonash|11 years ago|reply
By way of contrast, I started DBMS2 in 2005, and at no point did I come close to thinking of a viable-seeming advertising-based business model.
[+] [-] brooklynjam|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andsmi2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kfcm|11 years ago|reply
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of professional developer voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
I've read Dr. Dobb's for 30+ years, and it helped me move from a coder to programmer/developer to software engineer--while still retaining the hacker spirit. Each month, Dr. Dobb's, Sys Admin, et al were on my bookstore shopping list, to be read and re-read over the next month.
It will be missed.