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Dr. Dobb's Journal Going Web-Only
paleshadows writes "The first issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) was published in January 1976. A few days ago, Herb Sutter (the chair of the ISO C++ committee and a long-time DDJ columnist) announced through his latest blog post that, 'as of January 2009, Dr. Dobb's Journal is permanently suspending print publication and going web-only.' This follows an earlier announcement that PC Magazine is to become digital-only, too, as of February 2009. To those of us who enjoy reading such stuff away from the computer these are bad news, as there seems to be no other major technical programmers' magazines left standing."
Magazines shouldn't need batteries.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
When I got my January copy it was in a plastic bag with a brochure for sd west. The brochure was thicker than the magazine. I almost tossed the magazine and kept the brochure. So much has been cut back over the years. I will miss the bug of the month. It was an ad but it was fun. Maybe they'll still have it on the web version.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
2600 is still in print form.
Paper's going nowhere fast. We'll still use it for archival purposes, will your RSS feeds, PDAs and Kindles last a thousand years? Paper originals of the Magna Carta still exist today. If it had been written in an early .doc format I would already have trouble reading it, I can go to the British library to read a copy of the Magna Carta written in 1215.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Today we have our laptops, Kindles, RSS feeds, incredible PDAs, hell, my cell phone does more than first computer ever could, ten times over.
I used to read books and magazines on my Palm tungsten. Then I switched to blackberry, and I have nearly $1000 in ebooks that I can't read. At all. Why would people want to run that risk? The capabilities are there, but after /years/ of ebook publishing there's still no standard that will ensure this can't happen. Print media can always be read, no matter what platform you're using.
Of course, there's a much more practical concern: after 12-16 hours, I want to /stop/ looking at a monitor for a while.
Just please don't give me this nostalgic wasn't-it-great-back-then crap about how you used to be so excited for the new issue to come in the mail. Rather, be excited about seeing your RSS feed updated. Shift your focus, enjoy your nostalgia, but put it into perspective.
Nostalgia is longing for something past for its own sake. In this case, there's a measurable difference in quality. I can count on one hand the number of web sites that deliver the kind of quality technical information that DDJ and CUJ used to provide.
And among those web sites, it's still a challenge to find the valid, useful information hidden amidst blog entries where folks will hold forth on topics they know little to nothing about.
I haven't purchased a magazine outside of an airport in this millennium and I don't know anyone else who has, either. There isn't one thing a magazine could tell me that I haven't read (and probably re-re-read) many times over.
In other words, "I don't use this, and therefore nobody else does either"?
I have seen this stupid decision done before.
To accountants it's great on paper, web site's cheaper, and great traffic.
But they don't take into account that it's the print magazine that's been driving there traffic.
As soon as they stop the printed magazine people will slowly stop going to there site and they will slowly run out of cash.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso