8 ms·

When I come across magazines from the past such as this, I keep wondering why and when did we stop writing such beautifully crafted technical articles for the m

When I come across magazines from the past such as this, I keep wondering why and when did we stop writing such beautifully crafted technical articles for the masses and instead turned to advertisement-like pieces on consumer electronics. Look how empowering those articles were by treating you as a creative being, and how passivizing the current articles are in encouraging perpetual consumption.

cm2187 9y ago
Yeah I was born in the early 80s, so when I was a teenager, too late for these magazines (all PC magazines were already as you said) and too early for the internet (there was a nascent internet but without much resources available online). Probably the main reason I picked up programming late. I think the solution should come from school. Kids should learn basic coding like they learn basic math and physics. Then it's up to them whether they want to go further but that will give them the basics to be more than a passive user with these machines and will give them a chance to dive into it if they like it. It's often the most basic concepts that's are the biggest barrier to entry.
- jarvist 9y ago
  For this generation in the UK we were lucky in that the BBC Micro computers from the BBC Computer Literacy Project[1] were still physically in our primary school classrooms (early 90s). I have a very memorable young memory of programming LOGO on a physical turtle to get it to navigate a maze in the school hall, and an even earlier memory (perhaps aged 5) of playing Granny's Garden[2]. There were also a lot of the 8-bit micros cheap 2nd hand in the 90s, all of which booted to a BASIC command prompt. For me, I was also very lucky and stumbled across a set of INPUT [3] magazines at a school Fete. At secondary school, we had PCs, whose programming languages were locked down to stop us playing games on them. I totally agree with your central point. These small interventions at a very early age through school initiated a curiosity, and totally changed internalisation of future concepts in Maths and Physics. The generation after me lost out, as the primary schools had got rid of the 'obsolete' BBC Micros, and programming lessons were replaced with 'workplace-orientated' IT tasks (spreadsheets, letter writing). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny%27s_Garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny%27s_Garden [3] http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/magazines/input/input.htm http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/magazines/input/input.htm
  - cm2187 9y ago
    I actually got to play with Turtle in France. But these machines were already antiquated at that time, and I didn't think it was that useful. I agree with you, computer literacy doesn't start with coding. It starts with typing, understanding basic internet protocols and software (text editor, spreadsheets, slides) and then a little bit of coding. Just enough to be useful, to be able to automate basic tasks. It's important that it is very practical, first to be useful, but also to catch their interest. Like creating a website.
  - teh_klev 9y ago
    Wow.....I'd forgotten about INPUT magazine. I was ~17 at the time it was published and had every copy, along with BYTE, PC World (the UK one), Your Computer and a whole heap of other regular monthlys. What a blast from the past.
moh_maya 9y ago
I understand (I think), what you are saying. But I'd also argue that, back in the day, Byte & similar magazines were targeted at a fairly small subset of the population. Today, I think equivalent magazines are Make, Adafruit's blog, internet & all the resources available online. So, I think such magazines / content still exist & they still have an audience (if not a larger audience, thanks to MOOCs & Arduino / Pi, etc.) If you are making an argument that, in general, most magazines today publish trash, and somehow, the magazines published in the past were more content rich.. I'd challenge that with two points: a) Content heavy magazines / websites still exist --> Economist, Ars Technica, etc. They have a strong audience. b) The pool of people reading has gotten larger; and more magazines are catering to a more diverse population, some of which, as you imply, are drivel. But to say that such content is no longer published, or is accessible, I would think, is incorrect. I'd argue such content is much easier to access today than ever before.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  Yes they were targeted to a smaller portion of the population. Electronics projects, and hi-fi stereo systems were all the rage. Guys still had their hobbies. Most guys didn't have computers, but the guys who did could do a lot with their computers. I was too young, but I remember the older boys doing things, and hooking up things to their computers that we can't do with new MBP's. Meaning, their wasen't closed systems. Their was no need to buy product like the Rasberri Pi. When watching that movie about Jobs, I remember Seth saying, "You're going to decrease the number of ports from 12 to 3?". That really stuck with me. I remember guys taking those ports and doing all kind of stuff. Most of it was not recommended, but guys were experimenting with their computers. You could open them up, and repair them. There are some days I wonder if we would have all been better off without Jobs, and the Mac. That is in the long run. I got off topic, but the old magazine reminded me of a kinda better day. You paid for the magazine, and the magazine provided working hardware/software projects. You usually didn't need to buy a bunch of other pricy stuff to get the gizmo in the mag to work. You did need to buy a bread board, resistors, cpas, and the like, but that stuff was cheap, and bout at a surplus store, or Radio shack. I now buy a multi grand Apple, and you can't start hooking up my hardware projects to the back. It's pretty and slick, but there are some days I would like to have a few 12v pins to run my projects off of. There are many days I wish I open the device to upgrade, and repair--easily. Looking back, I think if Wos was the CEO, we might be farther along in innovation. I will admit my first computer was a Atari St 1200--I think? I bought it for college. I was the only kid in my classes who had a word processor. I even felt like I was cheating. I never told anyone about my computer. I would listen to them paying $2/page to a Typist, and not say anything. My girlfriend knew, but didn't want any part of computing. It was for Nerds. Plus, her indroduction to my computer was me stupidly drawing a dick pick. She was a good sport though, and said, stop it, it's making me horney. She's now making $500,000 a year, as director of something web in a small hedge fund near the valley. Did I get into all the peripheral projects I saw in BYTE--no, I didn't. I liked computing, but got tired of sitting in front of a screen. In all honesty, I wanted to be out in the world, birdogging almost anyone who would have me. Yea, I wish I could have a surgical clip on that Testosterone. My point is those old computers were in a weird way better/different that our slick closed boxes.
asplake 9y ago
I had the Smalltalk edition from August 1981 (I was 16). I've no idea who I came to mislay it but I've always regretted it
- mietek 9y ago
  This one? https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08
WalterBright 9y ago
The best BYTE for me was the one where they published the entire source code of a Pascal compiler, written in Basic. Up till then I was completely mystified how a compiler worked. In figuring out every line of that compiler, I felt like somebody turned the lights on. Later on, I was using a Pascal compiler on the PDP-11. I'd write bits of code, compile them, and look at the assembler. I was especially impressed with the clever way nested functions worked (the static link pointer). Nested functions in D are implemented the same way :-)
- boramalper 9y ago
  Do you still remember which issue it was? I'd love to read. =)
  - seesomesense 9y ago
    https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-09 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-09 p.58 A -TINY- PASCAL COMPILER, Part 1: The P-Code Interpreter [theme Software] [author Chung-Yuen]
    - boramalper 9y ago
      Thanks a ton! Much appreciated.
    - b4ux1t3 9y ago
      I love the detailed breakdown of how the front cover was made on page 4. That's so cool.
Theizestooke 9y ago
There's less and less money in journalism nowadays, people with the chops move on to PR or advertising.
jhbadger 9y ago
And BYTE itself turned into an "advertisement-like piece on consumer electronics" in its later years. Basically computer magazines (BYTE, Creative Computing, Dr. Dobbs, etc.) in the 1970s and early 1980s were for hobbyists by hobbyists. But then by the late 1980s computers were big business and the media shifted. Dr. Dobbs was longest hold-out, but by the mid 1990s it had pretty much shifted into a corporate Microsoft Windows developer magazine, although in the 2000s it returned a bit to open source geekery before dying in 2014.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Yeah, and in BYTE's case specifically, its always somewhat eclectic mix of mostly microcomputer-based topics worked OK for the hobbyists and early practitioners who tended to have pretty eclectic and wide-ranging interests themselves. But, as you say, the whole space got generally more corporate and more specialized and BYTE's lack of a real identity showed. I recall being invited to a press event when they were trying some sort of reboot in the aughts but it obviously didn't work.
  - teh_klev 9y ago
    I used to get BYTE from circa 1983 until the very end. What was noticeable was how physically thin BYTE had gotten near the end. Lifting just a year's worth of early BYTE magazines could almost put your back out :) That said, even at the end, it was still a cut above most other computer magazines on UK newsracks.
    - kevstev 9y ago
      I saw an archive of an issue on C, and I was shocked by two things- the enormous length- that one ran on over 300 pages, and even more-so, that a lot of the articles were still absolutely relevant today! It seems like a piece of history I was a little late to the party to. By the time I first picked one up, it had become a thin magazine not a whole lot better than PC Magazine.
      - ghaff 9y ago
jasode 9y ago
>technical articles for the masses BYTE was a niche magazine for a niche audience. BYTE was never for the masses. Perhaps your location in Armenia separates you from the actual popularity of BYTE magazine back in the day. I remember 1990s brick&mortar bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders would carry more popular magazines like "PC Magazine"[1] and "PC Computing"[2] but they didn't have BYTE on the shelves. You had to subscribe to BYTE by mail. How did someone subscribe to BYTE if they weren't on the retail racks in the first place?!? By mailing in the BYTE subscription card (advertisement) that was placed inside of PC Magazine! Also as trivia, BYTE was the last magazine I ever paid a subscription to (circle 1998?) because I felt cheated after paying up for a full year and after 1 issue, they shut down the operation. I got a form letter saying they would substitute with something else (Dr Dobbs? can't exactly remember) but they didn't honor their word and didn't send me a pro-rated refund for the unsent issues. Looking back, BYTE stealing my money was a godsend because it saved me from spending any $$$ on magazines for the last 20 years haha. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Magazine [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/Computing
- scelerat 9y ago
  My local public library branch and high school library (LA County; San Gabriel Valley) carried BYTE and you could easily find it in computer and book stores in the 1980s. By the 1990s it was on its way out, but it was as mainstream as any other computer pub of its time.
  - jasode 9y ago
    >, but it was as mainstream as any other computer pub of its time. We remember differently. Yes, the libraries had BYTE but again, I'm talking about relative popularity. As another datapoint, the 1980s grocery stores' magazine section which of course would be much smaller than Barnes & Noble would have PC Magazine and Computer Shopper but they never carried BYTE. BYTE was always more niche than PC Magazine which lowered the number of retail outlets where it could be purchased. PC Magazine covered applications (Lotus 123, MS DOS, etc) and games which was relevant to a larger population. BYTE was never a magazine for the "masses".
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Try 2600. It's more for hackers than programmers but you might find it to your liking.
rpeden 9y ago
I enjoy reading old copies of PC Magazine. In one indues of the magazine from January 1987[1], there's a great, in depth overview of QuickBasic 2 starting on page 285. It includes lots of examples and sample code. After this article, there's one about writing a fairly complex directory and file management utility - and it includes a complete listing of the asm code needed to write the program. The code is very well documented and is a real pleasure to read. I wonder if modern audiences would even be receptive to articles like these. I'm sure some would, but I think many people have a tl;dr attitude and would abandon ship early on. As a side note, I find old computer magazines to be great for coming up with fun side-project ideas. This same issue of PC Mag has lots of ads for things like database and spreadsheet applications that use a natural language interface. One could probably combine ideas like these with modern speech recognition and AI to come up with some fun and interesting projects and products. [1]https://ia601900.us.archive.org/33/items/PC-Mag-1987-01-13/PC-Mag-1987-01-13.pdf https://ia601900.us.archive.org/33/items/PC-Mag-1987-01-13/P...
jacinabox 9y ago
Look how ineffectual the social critique in terms of consumption is. Being a consumer is surely not a bad thing; it's wonderful to have comforts. "Consumption" then is not a negative, but a formal dialetheia. There seems to be a kind of sense that refusing material comforts is a kind of asceticism, but accepting them is like "selling out;" so in practice people don't think about it. From word origin, a dialetheia is a combination of a truth (aletheia) and a contradictory falsehood (letheia); letheia is Greek for forgetfulness. A dialetheia is a truth the telling of which makes you forget. Try to think of the truth as a function defined on a manifold. The definition of the function allows mostly true statements and mostly false to be very near in the distance measure of the manifold. Increased curvature comes from energy applied to some point in the manifold. The construction of the appearance of a dialetheia comes from a point with very high curvature where truths and falsehoods are very close together. If a singularity could exist in this space, it would be a dialetheia, a limit point the approach to which could be made from either truths or falsehoods. While Godel's theorem is not a dialetheia, it appears like a dialetheia in everyday terms because we freely pass from the statement "the thing is proved" to "the thing is true," that is we assume consistency in discourse. Dialetheias only have the appearance of true concepts, and can't exist in actuality. The concept of dialetheias is itself a dialetheia. When positing apparent dialetheias, it's important to show where the contradiction is and why it is a formal contradiction. The point of this argument being that, "consumption" and other dialetheias are self-contradictory concepts designed to control people. Dialetheias probably also play some role in existence. In other words, a dialetheia is the appearance of something out of joint in things, a state of affairs that can't exist in the presumed exactitude of the Platonic realm. This out-of-jointness sets the world apart from the ambient Platonic realm, making it "step forward" and exist. It's like a slave leaving his caste under the rule of an absolute caste system. He says, "Certainly I am a slave, but nevertheless, I won't be a slave."
blihp 9y ago
It pretty much ended in the 1980's but its worth mentioning that Byte never was 'for the masses', it was for the relatively geeky subset of the tech community (my absolute favorite mag from about '80-86 or so). Sure, there were some holdouts into the 90's but the enthusiast scene had faded significantly by the late 80's as computing went mainstream. And then died completely in the early-to-mid 90's as Windows took off. Unfortunately it's a reflection of the computing audience: In the 70's it was largely hardware hackers, in the 80's it was largely software hackers, in the 90's it was largely (business) software users, since the 00's it has been mostly consumers. (I'm exaggerating a bit as there have always been all types in every era, but this is what I remember the main focus as being) In the 70's and 80's these types of magazines were economically viable as people were willing to pay (gasp) for content like this and even so I don't think it was ever a spectacularly good business as the audience wasn't terribly large. Today, it would be at best extremely difficult to (profitably) run a web site targeting the same audience. Sure, the audience is at least 1-2 orders of magnitude larger but they are also far less willing to spend money and their attention is diluted by all the noise in the space. You could point to things like github but notice that the bulk of the 'content' on those sites are produced by the users of the sites who are not even the customers of those sites. This is why we can't have nice things...
- jburgess777 9y ago
  > Today, it would be at best extremely difficult to (profitably) run a web site targeting the same audience. This makes me think of https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/ If I remember correctly, the site has struggled to keep going at times and most of its income is from subscriptions: https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn How does LWN make its living? LWN is primarily supported by its readers, through subscription fees. We also bring in a small amount of money through advertising, but that is typically less than 10% of our revenue stream.

cm2187 9y ago

Yeah I was born in the early 80s, so when I was a teenager, too late for these magazines (all PC magazines were already as you said) and too early for the internet (there was a nascent internet but without much resources available online). Probably the main reason I picked up programming late. I think the solution should come from school. Kids should learn basic coding like they learn basic math and physics. Then it's up to them whether they want to go further but that will give them the basics to be more than a passive user with these machines and will give them a chance to dive into it if they like it. It's often the most basic concepts that's are the biggest barrier to entry.

jarvist 9y ago
For this generation in the UK we were lucky in that the BBC Micro computers from the BBC Computer Literacy Project[1] were still physically in our primary school classrooms (early 90s). I have a very memorable young memory of programming LOGO on a physical turtle to get it to navigate a maze in the school hall, and an even earlier memory (perhaps aged 5) of playing Granny's Garden[2]. There were also a lot of the 8-bit micros cheap 2nd hand in the 90s, all of which booted to a BASIC command prompt. For me, I was also very lucky and stumbled across a set of INPUT [3] magazines at a school Fete. At secondary school, we had PCs, whose programming languages were locked down to stop us playing games on them. I totally agree with your central point. These small interventions at a very early age through school initiated a curiosity, and totally changed internalisation of future concepts in Maths and Physics. The generation after me lost out, as the primary schools had got rid of the 'obsolete' BBC Micros, and programming lessons were replaced with 'workplace-orientated' IT tasks (spreadsheets, letter writing). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny%27s_Garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granny%27s_Garden [3] http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/magazines/input/input.htm http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/magazines/input/input.htm
- cm2187 9y ago
  I actually got to play with Turtle in France. But these machines were already antiquated at that time, and I didn't think it was that useful. I agree with you, computer literacy doesn't start with coding. It starts with typing, understanding basic internet protocols and software (text editor, spreadsheets, slides) and then a little bit of coding. Just enough to be useful, to be able to automate basic tasks. It's important that it is very practical, first to be useful, but also to catch their interest. Like creating a website.
- teh_klev 9y ago
  Wow.....I'd forgotten about INPUT magazine. I was ~17 at the time it was published and had every copy, along with BYTE, PC World (the UK one), Your Computer and a whole heap of other regular monthlys. What a blast from the past.

moh_maya 9y ago

I understand (I think), what you are saying. But I'd also argue that, back in the day, Byte & similar magazines were targeted at a fairly small subset of the population. Today, I think equivalent magazines are Make, Adafruit's blog, internet & all the resources available online. So, I think such magazines / content still exist & they still have an audience (if not a larger audience, thanks to MOOCs & Arduino / Pi, etc.) If you are making an argument that, in general, most magazines today publish trash, and somehow, the magazines published in the past were more content rich.. I'd challenge that with two points: a) Content heavy magazines / websites still exist --> Economist, Ars Technica, etc. They have a strong audience. b) The pool of people reading has gotten larger; and more magazines are catering to a more diverse population, some of which, as you imply, are drivel. But to say that such content is no longer published, or is accessible, I would think, is incorrect. I'd argue such content is much easier to access today than ever before.

icantdrive55 9y ago
Yes they were targeted to a smaller portion of the population. Electronics projects, and hi-fi stereo systems were all the rage. Guys still had their hobbies. Most guys didn't have computers, but the guys who did could do a lot with their computers. I was too young, but I remember the older boys doing things, and hooking up things to their computers that we can't do with new MBP's. Meaning, their wasen't closed systems. Their was no need to buy product like the Rasberri Pi. When watching that movie about Jobs, I remember Seth saying, "You're going to decrease the number of ports from 12 to 3?". That really stuck with me. I remember guys taking those ports and doing all kind of stuff. Most of it was not recommended, but guys were experimenting with their computers. You could open them up, and repair them. There are some days I wonder if we would have all been better off without Jobs, and the Mac. That is in the long run. I got off topic, but the old magazine reminded me of a kinda better day. You paid for the magazine, and the magazine provided working hardware/software projects. You usually didn't need to buy a bunch of other pricy stuff to get the gizmo in the mag to work. You did need to buy a bread board, resistors, cpas, and the like, but that stuff was cheap, and bout at a surplus store, or Radio shack. I now buy a multi grand Apple, and you can't start hooking up my hardware projects to the back. It's pretty and slick, but there are some days I would like to have a few 12v pins to run my projects off of. There are many days I wish I open the device to upgrade, and repair--easily. Looking back, I think if Wos was the CEO, we might be farther along in innovation. I will admit my first computer was a Atari St 1200--I think? I bought it for college. I was the only kid in my classes who had a word processor. I even felt like I was cheating. I never told anyone about my computer. I would listen to them paying $2/page to a Typist, and not say anything. My girlfriend knew, but didn't want any part of computing. It was for Nerds. Plus, her indroduction to my computer was me stupidly drawing a dick pick. She was a good sport though, and said, stop it, it's making me horney. She's now making $500,000 a year, as director of something web in a small hedge fund near the valley. Did I get into all the peripheral projects I saw in BYTE--no, I didn't. I liked computing, but got tired of sitting in front of a screen. In all honesty, I wanted to be out in the world, birdogging almost anyone who would have me. Yea, I wish I could have a surgical clip on that Testosterone. My point is those old computers were in a weird way better/different that our slick closed boxes.

asplake 9y ago

I had the Smalltalk edition from August 1981 (I was 16). I've no idea who I came to mislay it but I've always regretted it

mietek 9y ago
This one? https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08

WalterBright 9y ago

The best BYTE for me was the one where they published the entire source code of a Pascal compiler, written in Basic. Up till then I was completely mystified how a compiler worked. In figuring out every line of that compiler, I felt like somebody turned the lights on. Later on, I was using a Pascal compiler on the PDP-11. I'd write bits of code, compile them, and look at the assembler. I was especially impressed with the clever way nested functions worked (the static link pointer). Nested functions in D are implemented the same way :-)

boramalper 9y ago
Do you still remember which issue it was? I'd love to read. =)
- seesomesense 9y ago
  https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-09 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-09 p.58 A -TINY- PASCAL COMPILER, Part 1: The P-Code Interpreter [theme Software] [author Chung-Yuen]
  - boramalper 9y ago
    Thanks a ton! Much appreciated.
  - b4ux1t3 9y ago
    I love the detailed breakdown of how the front cover was made on page 4. That's so cool.

Theizestooke 9y ago

There's less and less money in journalism nowadays, people with the chops move on to PR or advertising.

jhbadger 9y ago

And BYTE itself turned into an "advertisement-like piece on consumer electronics" in its later years. Basically computer magazines (BYTE, Creative Computing, Dr. Dobbs, etc.) in the 1970s and early 1980s were for hobbyists by hobbyists. But then by the late 1980s computers were big business and the media shifted. Dr. Dobbs was longest hold-out, but by the mid 1990s it had pretty much shifted into a corporate Microsoft Windows developer magazine, although in the 2000s it returned a bit to open source geekery before dying in 2014.

ghaff 9y ago
Yeah, and in BYTE's case specifically, its always somewhat eclectic mix of mostly microcomputer-based topics worked OK for the hobbyists and early practitioners who tended to have pretty eclectic and wide-ranging interests themselves. But, as you say, the whole space got generally more corporate and more specialized and BYTE's lack of a real identity showed. I recall being invited to a press event when they were trying some sort of reboot in the aughts but it obviously didn't work.
- teh_klev 9y ago
  I used to get BYTE from circa 1983 until the very end. What was noticeable was how physically thin BYTE had gotten near the end. Lifting just a year's worth of early BYTE magazines could almost put your back out :) That said, even at the end, it was still a cut above most other computer magazines on UK newsracks.
  - kevstev 9y ago
    I saw an archive of an issue on C, and I was shocked by two things- the enormous length- that one ran on over 300 pages, and even more-so, that a lot of the articles were still absolutely relevant today! It seems like a piece of history I was a little late to the party to. By the time I first picked one up, it had become a thin magazine not a whole lot better than PC Magazine.
    - ghaff 9y ago

jasode 9y ago

>technical articles for the masses BYTE was a niche magazine for a niche audience. BYTE was never for the masses. Perhaps your location in Armenia separates you from the actual popularity of BYTE magazine back in the day. I remember 1990s brick&mortar bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders would carry more popular magazines like "PC Magazine"[1] and "PC Computing"[2] but they didn't have BYTE on the shelves. You had to subscribe to BYTE by mail. How did someone subscribe to BYTE if they weren't on the retail racks in the first place?!? By mailing in the BYTE subscription card (advertisement) that was placed inside of PC Magazine! Also as trivia, BYTE was the last magazine I ever paid a subscription to (circle 1998?) because I felt cheated after paying up for a full year and after 1 issue, they shut down the operation. I got a form letter saying they would substitute with something else (Dr Dobbs? can't exactly remember) but they didn't honor their word and didn't send me a pro-rated refund for the unsent issues. Looking back, BYTE stealing my money was a godsend because it saved me from spending any $$$ on magazines for the last 20 years haha. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Magazine [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/Computing

scelerat 9y ago
My local public library branch and high school library (LA County; San Gabriel Valley) carried BYTE and you could easily find it in computer and book stores in the 1980s. By the 1990s it was on its way out, but it was as mainstream as any other computer pub of its time.
- jasode 9y ago
  >, but it was as mainstream as any other computer pub of its time. We remember differently. Yes, the libraries had BYTE but again, I'm talking about relative popularity. As another datapoint, the 1980s grocery stores' magazine section which of course would be much smaller than Barnes & Noble would have PC Magazine and Computer Shopper but they never carried BYTE. BYTE was always more niche than PC Magazine which lowered the number of retail outlets where it could be purchased. PC Magazine covered applications (Lotus 123, MS DOS, etc) and games which was relevant to a larger population. BYTE was never a magazine for the "masses".

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

Try 2600. It's more for hackers than programmers but you might find it to your liking.

rpeden 9y ago

I enjoy reading old copies of PC Magazine. In one indues of the magazine from January 1987[1], there's a great, in depth overview of QuickBasic 2 starting on page 285. It includes lots of examples and sample code. After this article, there's one about writing a fairly complex directory and file management utility - and it includes a complete listing of the asm code needed to write the program. The code is very well documented and is a real pleasure to read. I wonder if modern audiences would even be receptive to articles like these. I'm sure some would, but I think many people have a tl;dr attitude and would abandon ship early on. As a side note, I find old computer magazines to be great for coming up with fun side-project ideas. This same issue of PC Mag has lots of ads for things like database and spreadsheet applications that use a natural language interface. One could probably combine ideas like these with modern speech recognition and AI to come up with some fun and interesting projects and products. [1]https://ia601900.us.archive.org/33/items/PC-Mag-1987-01-13/PC-Mag-1987-01-13.pdf https://ia601900.us.archive.org/33/items/PC-Mag-1987-01-13/P...

jacinabox 9y ago

Look how ineffectual the social critique in terms of consumption is. Being a consumer is surely not a bad thing; it's wonderful to have comforts. "Consumption" then is not a negative, but a formal dialetheia. There seems to be a kind of sense that refusing material comforts is a kind of asceticism, but accepting them is like "selling out;" so in practice people don't think about it. From word origin, a dialetheia is a combination of a truth (aletheia) and a contradictory falsehood (letheia); letheia is Greek for forgetfulness. A dialetheia is a truth the telling of which makes you forget. Try to think of the truth as a function defined on a manifold. The definition of the function allows mostly true statements and mostly false to be very near in the distance measure of the manifold. Increased curvature comes from energy applied to some point in the manifold. The construction of the appearance of a dialetheia comes from a point with very high curvature where truths and falsehoods are very close together. If a singularity could exist in this space, it would be a dialetheia, a limit point the approach to which could be made from either truths or falsehoods. While Godel's theorem is not a dialetheia, it appears like a dialetheia in everyday terms because we freely pass from the statement "the thing is proved" to "the thing is true," that is we assume consistency in discourse. Dialetheias only have the appearance of true concepts, and can't exist in actuality. The concept of dialetheias is itself a dialetheia. When positing apparent dialetheias, it's important to show where the contradiction is and why it is a formal contradiction. The point of this argument being that, "consumption" and other dialetheias are self-contradictory concepts designed to control people. Dialetheias probably also play some role in existence. In other words, a dialetheia is the appearance of something out of joint in things, a state of affairs that can't exist in the presumed exactitude of the Platonic realm. This out-of-jointness sets the world apart from the ambient Platonic realm, making it "step forward" and exist. It's like a slave leaving his caste under the rule of an absolute caste system. He says, "Certainly I am a slave, but nevertheless, I won't be a slave."

blihp 9y ago

It pretty much ended in the 1980's but its worth mentioning that Byte never was 'for the masses', it was for the relatively geeky subset of the tech community (my absolute favorite mag from about '80-86 or so). Sure, there were some holdouts into the 90's but the enthusiast scene had faded significantly by the late 80's as computing went mainstream. And then died completely in the early-to-mid 90's as Windows took off. Unfortunately it's a reflection of the computing audience: In the 70's it was largely hardware hackers, in the 80's it was largely software hackers, in the 90's it was largely (business) software users, since the 00's it has been mostly consumers. (I'm exaggerating a bit as there have always been all types in every era, but this is what I remember the main focus as being) In the 70's and 80's these types of magazines were economically viable as people were willing to pay (gasp) for content like this and even so I don't think it was ever a spectacularly good business as the audience wasn't terribly large. Today, it would be at best extremely difficult to (profitably) run a web site targeting the same audience. Sure, the audience is at least 1-2 orders of magnitude larger but they are also far less willing to spend money and their attention is diluted by all the noise in the space. You could point to things like github but notice that the bulk of the 'content' on those sites are produced by the users of the sites who are not even the customers of those sites. This is why we can't have nice things...

jburgess777 9y ago
> Today, it would be at best extremely difficult to (profitably) run a web site targeting the same audience. This makes me think of https://lwn.net/ https://lwn.net/ If I remember correctly, the site has struggled to keep going at times and most of its income is from subscriptions: https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn How does LWN make its living? LWN is primarily supported by its readers, through subscription fees. We also bring in a small amount of money through advertising, but that is typically less than 10% of our revenue stream.