Top 5 Software Development Magazines?

juanescalante asks: "I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science about 9 months ago and I have been working as a software developer for more than a year now. I keep looking for ways to improve myself in what I do, and seeking to gain knowledge from those who have a lot more experience than me. I've been reading books like 'Code Complete' and 'The Pragmatic Programmer' and I would also like to subscribe to a couple of great magazines. So, to all you experienced developers, which are the top software development magazines?"

Comments

ACM, IEEE

[lotussuper7]

Have you considered publications put out by folks like the ACM or IEEE?

When I was an active programmer, doing OS development and such, I used to read publications from both.

IEEE has many journals, conference proceedings, and standards.

ACM has just as much, but, IMHO, is somewhat more acedemic in slant. I'll leave the exploration of the ACM web site in your able hands.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

I like Dr. Dobbs Journal, C/C++ Users Journal, Communications of the ACM and IEEE CGA.

If you haven't heard of DDJ or CUJ before, give them both a try. DDJ covers all sorts of stuff and (as an example) the October '05 CUJ had the best accidental intro to template metaprogramming I've ever seen.

One of CACM's selling points is that the articles are regularly featured on slashdot. :p

IMO, IEEE CGA is much more useful to me than any of ACM's SIGGRAPH stuff. This is only relevant if you're into computer graphics at all.

I'm thinking of joining the Association of C/C++ Users for it's C-Vu journal, I dunno.

I read 2600 for the hell of it.

Your mileage will vary.

Re:Wrong question

[Marillion]

Writing lots of code is a drasticly slower improvement process than reading code. Not books, but code. There's lots of code out there. Most of it is bad. Bad code is just as educational as good code. Sometimes with code, like with people, it isn't always obvious which is which.

Another thing to do is to get involved in a user's group. Here in Cincinnati there is an XP users group. In this case, XP is eXtreme Programing, not a version of Windows. It started out as a lab to try out XP in a "safe" environment. It's evolved into a group of people who really care about making progammers more effective.

What really amazed me about this group is in addition to talking about patterns, Dependency Injection, Transaction Script, MVC, and so on; they also talk about how important non-technical things can really impact your productivity. How a user phrases a requirement will affect the design and style of your program. You won't realize they're doing it. Users also have a tendency to create technical solutions for you. More often than not, the solutions and designs they stear you to are not as effective a design as they could be.

Re:Get a wide selection...

[Surt]

An embedded future in which every embedded device will have a fully functioning OS with modern development tools and languages, of course.