yrdbrd@bmcg.UUCP (Larry J. Huntley) (08/28/85)
Another Magazine Falls to the Weenies
September, 1985 -- After nearly ten fruitful years of publishing
articles of general interest to the widely diverse audience of the
microcomputing community, the current issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal
arrived today, looking forlorn and tired. Gone is the Annual
Forth Issue. Gone is the "Running Light Without Overbyte" state-
ment. The very heart seems to have been wrung out of the old boy
and left somewhere between San Ramon (home of the magazine's original
publishers, People's Computer Company) and Palo Alto (where M & T
Publishing, Inc., the current publishers, reside.) Can this be the
beginning of the end of what was once a highly respected magazine
among the true hackers?
Let us look inside and examine the organs of this venerable old
soldier. First the table of contents.....Hmm. An article about "fgrep."
An article about sort algorithms, written in C. TEX for the IBM PC.
Compiler Designs. MSDOS disk input. More compilers. UNIX to process
communication. Signals. Search/sort algorithms. Hard disk interface
for the Mac. CP/M Exchange. 16-bit Toolbox (for an 8-bit machine.)
Well, it appears that everyone in the world is writing in C, running it
under UNIX on an IBM-PC. But perhaps not; let's look further...
Page 6. A photo of a person who looks like he's worried about
whether or not he made the lease payment on the Bimmer this month or
if he has enough Perrier in the refrigerator. He's actually bemoaning
the problems of publishing a magazine for the advanced programmer. Aha!
So that's what he's up to! Tells us that DDJ will be looking more
closely at advanced processors (like the 8088, one wonders) while
not abandoning users of the 8080/6502 class. No more hardware issues.
Talks a lot about assembly language. Doesn't say they will publish
any assembly language programs; just talks about it. Sigh.
Page 8. Letters. Some quotes:
"Do not include hardware articles. Other magazines do a fine job of covering
hardware...If you expand your scope to include hardware, you will dilute your
focus..."
[This guy should be required to name two magazines that "do a fine
job of covering hardware."]
"..I'm in favor of semi-annual hardware issues.."
[So am I, but then what do I know?]
"..Why not start a separate journal, a hardware companion to DDJ?.."
[Good idea. Then let's NOT sell it to some yuppi-fied publishing
company.]
"..there are already plenty of articles on hardware tinkering [TINKERING?!]
in other journals and it is out of character for DDJ...In these days of
(almost) standardized and universally available hardware, the audience for
useful software articles is larger...blah..blah..blab..mumble..mutter..
mince.."
[Here's another one who thinks that hardware is something that you put
in a louvered plastic cabinet, shake twice, punch the reset button, and
it types "login:" on the screen. I wondered how he'd like it if all the
magazines in the world published their articles in BASIC and never got
any more meaningful than "Sprite Motion on the Commodore 64 in BASIC."]
In CP/M Exchange we are told that CP/M Plus has "Level D" support from
DRI. I take it that Level D = 0. I wonder what that means for 2.2,
2.X, or 1.4; Level Z? CP/M Plus will no longer be sold unconfigured.
The Ampro Little Board is reviewed -- almost a hardware article! Careful
there, DDJ. Don't want to be out of character.
Meta Question: When is someone going to publish an honest-to-gosh
COMPUTER magazine? You know, with beginner-to-advanced articles on
hardware and software, packages and techniques, chips and languages,
snatches fo code and public-domain operating systems, that is not driven
to one particular market. I'm TIRED to death of C and UNIX and IBM PC's.
I always used DDJ as a stick to beat back BYTE, but now what?
(Snivel...been waiting all year for the FORTH issue, and now this. Damn
chaos...gripe..)
More Depressed Than Usual,
'brd
--
Larry J. Huntley Burroughs Corporation
Distributed Systems Group MS-703
10850 Via Frontera San Diego, CA 92128
(619) 485-4544
There was a passel of them Theosophists at the other end of the
bar, raisin' the Devil. They had him about ten feet off the floor,
and I could tell by the red clay on his hooves and his black aura
that he was up to no good, so I stumped up to him and said, "Sam
Buku, there ain't enough room in this life-cycle fer the both of
us!" And the little devil up and challenged me to a game of Ten-
Card Tarot, Pentacles wild. I seen him deal a High Priestess off
the bottom of the deck, and then...brownc@utah-cs.UUCP (Eric C. Brown) (09/03/85)
In article <1824@bmcg.UUCP> yrdbrd@bmcg.UUCP (Larry J. Huntley) writes: >Well, it appears that everyone in the world is writing in C, running it >under UNIX on an IBM-PC. But perhaps not; let's look further... No, it appears that everyone in the world is writing articles about C that runs under un*x on an I*M pc. >Talks a lot about assembly language. Doesn't say they will publish >any assembly language programs; just talks about it. Sigh. They can't publish what they don't recieve. So why don't you submit some articles on (yech) assembly language programs?? >[This guy should be required to name two magazines that "do a fine >job of covering hardware."] Well, there's a new magazine out called ComputerSmyth that is supposed to cover hardware, and then there's micro cornucopia, and the reborn Micro/Systems... >Meta Question: When is someone going to publish an honest-to-gosh >COMPUTER magazine? You know, with beginner-to-advanced articles on >hardware and software, packages and techniques, chips and languages, >snatches fo code and public-domain operating systems, that is not driven >to one particular market. I'm TIRED to death of C and UNIX and IBM PC's. >I always used DDJ as a stick to beat back BYTE, but now what? When the flip are the editors going to RECIEVE some articles on whatever you want?? Personally, Forth (and C) makes me puke, but this month's articles were rather impressive. Perhaps we are not enlightened out here in the sticks, so we are easily impressed by some algorithms. Personally, I would have preferred to see something else besides yet another sorting and searching article, but at least these weren't yet another rehash of Bubble&Shell&Quick sort. Eric C. Brown brownc@utah-cs Execute People, not Programs.
toma@tekchips.UUCP (Tom Almy) (09/03/85)
In article <1824@bmcg.UUCP> yrdbrd@bmcg.UUCP (Larry J. Huntley) writes: > > > Another Magazine Falls to the Weenies > >arrived today, looking forlorn and tired. Gone is the Annual >Forth Issue. Gone is the "Running Light Without Overbyte" state- >ment. >(Snivel...been waiting all year for the FORTH issue, and now this. Damn >chaos...gripe..) The Annual Forth Issue will be in October. Also any publication that gives instructions on how to increase a 128k Mac to 512k should talk about "Running Light". If DDJ still talked about BASIC interpreters running in 2K, I wouldn't look at it (can it be that all computerists write stand-alone assembly language programs for 8080s?). Tom Almy
dws%tolerant.uucp@BRL.ARPA (Dave W. Smith) (09/07/85)
In article <1824@bmcg.UUCP> yrdbrd@bmcg.UUCP (Larry J. Huntley) writes: > Well, it appears that everyone in the world is writing in C, running it > under UNIX on an IBM-PC. (Book) Publishers are very concerned about reaching as large a segment of the market as possible. Hence no "Programming in C on your Sinclair" books. The PC (and Unix) seem to be pretty large common denominators. Magazine editors are also concerned, but are limited more by what gets submitted by authors. Surprise, there are a lot more technical authors writing C on their PC's or on Unix systems than on brand Z micros. If you think that there's a need to be filled by an article about writing something in C for a non-PC, non-Unix machine, then by all means write one and submit it for publication! Better yet, contact your favorite magazines for style guides, and talk to the editors about your ideas. Some of the personal computer magazines are really starved for articles with real technical content. Some of them will even pay you. -- David W. Smith {ucbvax}!tolerant!dws Tolerant Systems, Inc. 408/946-5667
sorgatz%ttidcc.uucp@BRL.ARPA (Avatar) (09/07/85)
< munch! gobble! chomp! chew! Why don't "THEY" fix this bug? >
Larry-
Alas! There is _NO_ cure for this disease that magazines seem to catch! I
remember when 'Byte' was a 100 pg. Hacker's-delight..nowadays, if you can
manage to lift a copy of 'Byte', and get past the articles on how to <**>
for Business Managers...you might notice that there are about 10 companies
left that still sell parts! The problem is the "3-PieceSuits" have taken
over every means of communication. What we need is not another magazine,
but a Hacker's BulletinBoard! These 'Suits, (as we, the Rabble, here call
'em!) are so busy trying to memorize the latest buzz-words that they'd
never bother to dial into something like that.
-Avatar->
Erik K. Sorgatz
Transaction Technology Inc. (Citicorp's R/AD West) ... . ... . ...
3100 ocean Park Blvd. (zone V1) . | |..|..| | .
Santa Monica, Ca. 90405 |.|....|....|.|
USENET path: {garfield,lasspvax,linus,cmcl2,seismo} |.|....|....|.|
!philabs!ttidca!sorgatz | | ...|... | |
("..My poor Krel! Even they must have evolved up from the ..| | .|. | |..
mindless primative..after a million years of shining sanity, they could
hardly have known what power was destroying them!" -Dr. Morbius F.P.)cem@intelca.UUCP (Chuck McManis) (09/10/85)
> Alas! There is _NO_ cure for this disease that magazines seem to catch! I > remember when 'Byte' was a 100 pg. Hacker's-delight..nowadays, if you can > manage to lift a copy of 'Byte', and get past the articles on how to <**> > for Business Managers... You might notice, Byte is the incredible shrinking magazine. Seems the slow down/recession/shakeout/<your favorite euphemism here> is starting to affect more and more people. --Chuck -- - - - D I S C L A I M E R - - - {ihnp4,fortune}!dual\ All opinions expressed herein are my {qantel,idi}-> !intelca!cem own and not those of my employer, my {ucbvax,hao}!hplabs/ friends, or my avocado plant. :-}