ehs@jumbo.dec.com (Ed Satterthwaite) (11/17/87)
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has given up on Antic and thinks that Analog is slipping. It seems to me that Analog's publication policy is exactly backwards. Object code is for reading by computers; source code is at least potentially interesting to people. I can't imagine that many readers actually type page after page of numbers into the so-called "machine-language loaders" when disk versions are available at a reasonable price, especially given the risk that the resulting program will be mediocre or worse. On the other hand, I have often gotten ideas and documentation-by-example from the assembly language listings, even when I've had no use for the program itself. Maybe some letters to the editor or publisher could help to reverse this trend. On the other hand, the appearance of a section devoted to video game machines in the latest issue of Analog seems a bad omen. Along the same lines, I've noticed that books about the Atari 8-bitters -- good, bad and indifferent -- have almost disappeared from the computer and technical book stores in this area. Also, street prices of current and discontinued models as well as spares seem to be going up. Too bad.