Dr. Dobb's 38-Year Run Comes To an End

An anonymous reader writes: Dr. Dobb's — long time icon of programming magazines — "sunsets" at the end of the year. Editor Andrew Binstock says despite growing traffic numbers, the decline in revenue from ads means there will be no new content posted after 2014 ends. (The site will stay up for at least a year, hopefully longer.) Younger people may not care, but for the hard core old guys, it marks the end of a world where broad knowledge of computers and being willing to create solutions instead of reuse them was valuable. Binstock might disagree; he said, "As our page views show, the need for an independent site with in-depth articles, code, algorithms, and reliable product reviews is still very much present. And I will dearly miss that content. I wish I could point you to another site that does similar work, but alas, I know of none."

Comments

Pretty sad

[mingot]

Loved it growing up. I learned a lot from the al stevens run of articles where he built a terminal program.

Re:Pretty sad

[Dutch Gun]

I was a subscriber back in the day. Sad to see it going, but it's not too surprising, given modern trends.

I have to admit, though, the content was a bit on the broad side to be really useful to me, since my focus was mostly on client-side application programming in C++ (I wanted to become a videogame programmer). I was still a student then, so about 90% of the content flew right over my head. As such, I found the C/C++ User's Journal more relevant. Even so, I enjoyed reading it and trying to figure out what they were talking about. Eventually, only about 75% went over my head, so I think I learned a few things, although I still couldn't write a database query to save my life.

Re:Pretty sad

[Dutch Gun]

Or the modern trend of obsolescence of old media formats.

The simple fact of the matter is that Dr. Dobbs and similar magazines really aren't as relevant in the modern world, and that's why they're being mothballed. They've been replaced by a number of things. Online technical resources are increasingly abundant, and are often more than sufficient to learn about any topic you desire. Nearly every question I have as a professional programmer has likely already been asked and answered, often in considerable detail, on sites such as stack overflow. Various how-to topics are explored on both personal and professional blogs or other programmer-focused sites, and everything is nicely indexed and immediately accessible through the magic of Google search.

The simple fact that Google rarely points to Dr Dobbs' site about things I search for (maybe your searches are different) tends to highlight its increasing irrelevance. As much as I enjoyed reading it a few decades ago, it's time to move on. The world has changed, and some things inevitably get left behind.

Hardly (and sadly) not a unique tale

[Anonymous Coward]

There were some truly excellent magazines way back in the 70's and 80's. We had BYTE to set the standard, with excellent publications like Dr Dobbs, Computer Language, and even Nibble.

As the PC arose, however, magazine after magazine seems to have been taken over by jerks at places like CMP who drained them of all their meaty technical content, flushed all non-PC-compatible content, and in some cases tried to convert them into industry rags. Younger computer users do not have that same joy of getting a monthly magazine with articles loaded with code and/or schematics and parts lists or (in the case of computer language) coverage of some new computer language that has some interesting featrures and might be just the right fit for some new project. The publications are sadly a case study in how hired-gun "interchangeable" CEOs with too many MBAs and no common sense or technical backgrounds can ruin a good institution. One would have thought the spectacular lessons of Scully at Apple (or Fiorina at HP) would have put an end to such screwups acress the entire computer industry...

Dr Dobb's Journal of Computing Calisthenics and orthodontia running light without overbyte was among the very best, and you just cannot precisely reproduce that (or a half-inch thick issue of BYTE (from before about 1985)) with a web page...

Sunset Dr. Dobbs

[smittyoneeach]

Sunset Dr. Dobbs
Ye nattering nabobs
Who'd prefer cleanshaven
Java refactoring jobs
Burma Shave

Re:When nearly all of your readers block ads...

[bzipitidoo]

No, don't make the ads so obnoxious. I wouldn't block them if advertisers wouldn't pig out on my resources and force me to turn off the sound so I'm not embarrassed or distracted by some loud jingle, with blinking text, frenetic animation, and a flashing background. When ads take more than 5% of my bandwidth, RAM, and CPU, and make my browser unstable, I do something about it. If I have to reposition windows to hide obnoxiously distracting animation, I'll block it. IF it's not easy to block, I'll quit visiting the website.