10 ms·
Farewell American Computer Magazines
- tibbydudeza 3y agoI miss Byte Magazine but not the annual PC Magazine Best Printer Edition tome.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoI don't know, just the feeling of abundance you got from those inch-thick Computer Shopper issues, 90% ads ... (And I'm the guy who thinks advertising is inherently toxic, but it damn sure is beguiling ...)
- 13of40 3y agoI think the Seattle Public Library has a complete archive of BYTE magazine if you ever feel like spending a weekend typing a Lunar Lander simulator into a TI-99/4a emulator. You know, for old times sake.
- euroderf 3y agoOCR from a decent cellphone photo should work eh ? Unless a listing is in that dot-matrix style and the OCR software is not up to the task.
- mariuolo 3y agoNext step should be finding a way to encode it into a tape or disk image to feed to an emulator or possibly a wav file to use with the real thing.
- flir 3y agoYeah, but you won't learn to program from OCR. (I credit typing in listings for about 80% of my initial learning).
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoCompute!'s Gazette was my "GitHub of the 80s" for my Commodore machines. It was absolutely a wild ride, typing in programs from the back to do everything from games and word processing and who knows what. IIRC, they began with BASIC, but then they essentially bootstrapped a foolproof, checksummed machine-code editor and, somewhat regrettably, cut out the source-code middleman. The punchline is that I did not necessarily have any way of saving those programs to persistent storage, so it was just like... keep the computer turned on for a week? Most coders learn so much from hacking on other people's code, it's an indispensable step. So typing in code is a great opportunity to experience coding, starting with a working codebase, and perhaps making your own tweaks, fixes, and enhancements. Commodore BASIC was perfect for rapid prototyping and access to sound and graphics primitives.
- u801e 3y ago> then they essentially bootstrapped a foolproof, checksummed machine-code editor I remember that I copied a short program in BASIC that you had to run in order to type in the machine code part of the main program you were typing. It would sound a bell if the checksum had no error, otherwise you would hear a buzz sound. > and, somewhat regrettably, cut out the source-code middleman. The programs I typed in had parts in BASIC and other in machine code. I just wish the machine code parts used the instruction mnemonics instead of the actual instruction byte code. It definitely would have been more educational to see instructions like LDA, SDA, CMP, JSR, etc instead of the actual number values.
- ignite 3y agoYou are correct. Grabbing a random issue of BYTE from the internet archive, and finding a listing, I get the code below. There were some minor errors I fixed, like 3 -> }. Main issue was loss of whitespace, so not good for python :-). But the whole was amazingly quick. Getting code from a print magazine from 35 years ago into editable form in a couple of minutes. https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1987-04/page/n151/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1987-04/page/n151/... {$K-}{ turn of checking for stack overf low } program interrupttest; type IoProcess = *integer : var count: integer: var timerhandler: IoProcess; ... {definitions of NewIoProcess and IoAttach } procedure incrementer: begin count:=succ (count ) : end; begin timerhandler:=NewIoProcess(Ofs(incrementer).1000): count:=0; ioAttach ($1C, timerhondler); | attach himerhondleich" user | while true do timer interrupt ( 1Ch ) begin writeln (count ); Delay (100); { delay 100 milliseconds} end; end.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aestetix 3y ago2600 is still around.
- StanislavPetrov 3y agoIn the food court, near the payphones.
- systems_glitch 3y agoWe keep talking about restarting our local 2600 (paused due to coronavirus and a makerspace implosion), probably ought to.
- Bluecobra 3y agoThe perfect companion for toliet time at work.
- bsenftner 3y agoAt some point somewhere between the late 80's and the mid '90's the entire computer magazine series of rags became little more than the video game wall to wall advertisements, including the gushing of over praise in all their "journalism articles". When they failed to offer the service they were supposed, they claimed to offer their grave was dug. It's been 30 years of nonsense nothing-but-ads computer magazines, surprised they lasted this long.
- speed_spread 3y agoI was a Byte subscriber. The ads were part of the content as they gave me a feel of the market. From big companies to the little guys in the back pages, you could see what people were selling and how it related to the magazine's own content.
- bsenftner 3y agoByte's articles were rarely critical, they couldn't be or they'd risk advertisers business.
- teh_klev 3y agoI didn't mind that much. For example when IBM introduced their Micro Channel Architecture, the "reviews" of machines such as the PS/2 Model 80 were pretty much matter of fact, explaining the technical details and with some decent photos. And this was still useful in pre-WWW times and even beyond.
- speed_spread 3y agoThat's alright. Byte's articles aimed more at connecting the state of the art, both academic and commercial, to actual problems being solved. You didn't read Byte for first-hand review of products but for insights on the computing world as a whole.
- j33zusjuice 3y agoThere are still a handful of Linux magazines that I see at some stores where I buy computer gear. I guess I don’t know that they’re American, but they’re sold in America, and printed in English. That seems close enough to me.
- cubefox 3y agoInteresting that Linux Magazine is able to survive despite the low Linux market share. I guess professional audience is much more likely to buy magazines nowadays than the noobs.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoI miss developer magazines. I like and prefer the paper format. I learned so much from Dr Dobbs. I learned a lot from MSDN Magazine (changed names several times) Last few copies I read I was disappointed in the technical content. I also loved Byte magazine, but it was for a more general audience. What is Pournelle up to this month? I dont remember the correct names anymore but ZX Spectrum User or some such was also a source of great learning in programming.
- djaychela 3y agoI think it was Spectrum User. I also recall Your Sinclair being useful. I loved Crash, but that was games focused and mostly because I loved the cover artwork.
- spacemadness 3y agoI also miss receiving a monthly batch of new knowledge. Websites trickle in new articles usually. There’s something about receiving that batch and having time to absorb it before the next batch arrives.
- JohnFen 3y agoMe too. Not just the format (in hindsight, printed magazines have huge advantages that apparently can't be replicated electronically), but the content itself was so much better than most things I see online.
- Tangurena2 3y agoIt was probably "ZX Computing". I found that MSDN magazines leaned a bit too far forwards. When I needed to learn some technology, I would find it in 1-3 year old magazines. Due to constant site reorganizations, the code behind the articles might still exist, or it might have been lost to link rot. Others you may have read could include "C Programming Journal" and "Embedded Systems Programming".
- unwiredben 3y agoJerry Pournelle isn't up to much anymore, as he died in 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle
- cubefox 3y agoA massive advantage of paper books and magazines is that you are not constantly distracted by the temptations of a multitasking OS.
- fmsf 3y agoand they are easier to take to the beach
- systems_glitch 3y agoAnd the format doesn't become unreadable due to software changes!
- taeric 3y agoThough, sadly, many code snippets will be.
- hutzlibu 3y agoI started printing out again. That also helps and it is nicer to read, when sitting in the bright sun, than a screen.
- Swizec 3y agoProtip: get a reMarkable or similar e-ink device. Revolutionized my reading, especially for academic papers.
- pklausler 3y agoI have a reMarkable 2 and it is a lousy reading device, IMO. Just not enough contrast and no backlight.
- Swizec 3y agoI find it works great in natural light and I agree a backlight would fix the problems with low contrast … but the weeks-long battery life is nice too. Personally I find the long battery life more useful than a backlight. You can always use a reading light same as you would with printed materials.
- dghughes 3y agoYoung ones today won't know the joy of the ridiculous size of Computer Shopper 2kg (~4 pounds) of paper.
- compsciphd 3y agoI got it for the ads, not the articles :)
- elzbardico 3y agoI loved the ads at that time. Pure hardware porn.
- qohen 3y agoYoung ones today won't know the joy of the ridiculous size of Computer Shopper 2kg (~4 pounds) of paper. True, though they will be able to experience it online -- for anyone who didn't see it, there was a very recent post on HN[0] about someone who took it upon themselves to scan 200 issues, which will be put on the Internet Archive (and I expect that gaps in the collection will likely get filled). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36206526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36206526
- ToddWBurgess 3y agoDr. Dobb's Dec 1994 had an article on writing HTML. I used it as a reference to write my first homepage (remember when homepages were a thing?) in Dec. 1994 on the computer science club's server. It was my first introduction to the inner workings of the web. Fun times.
- dr-detroit 3y ago[dead]
- technothrasher 3y ago> remember when homepages were a thing? Yup. Back around the same time, the local newspaper found my homepage and wanted to interview me about it. I waxed poetically about how the web was the ultimate enabler, bringing big and small publishers back to the same level and allowing anybody to be heard. Sounded great at the time, but I'm more and more afraid that pipe dream of my young adult self is long gone now, along with much of my hair.
- JohnFen 3y ago> remember when homepages were a thing? Remember? I still have mine. :)
- systems_glitch 3y agoThey're from before my time, but I have a bunch of usergroup newsletters/small magazines from the 1970s and 1980s that are a little more specific than Dr. Dobbs and BYTE: stuff like INSUA (North Star usergroup publication), PEEK 65 (6502 and largely Ohio Scientific), and FORTH Dimension (FORTH language specific). Good stuff, not a ton of adverts. For a few of them I have the whole or very nearly whole set, and have read through them. It's somewhat sad reading through the last issues, as most of the usergroup size publications seemed to know the end was near.
- cbm-vic-20 3y agoMany of the old-school computer magazines are available at the Internet Archive. Byte: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine Dr. Dobbs: https://archive.org/search?query=dr.+dobbs+journal https://archive.org/search?query=dr.+dobbs+journal Compute!: https://archive.org/details/compute-magazine https://archive.org/details/compute-magazine
- anonymousiam 3y agoNuts & Volts has archives available on their main page: https://www.nutsvolts.com/ https://www.nutsvolts.com/ (Archives here: https://www.nutsvolts.com/blog/archives https://www.nutsvolts.com/blog/archives)
- fortran77 3y agoYou can read the original article here: https://www.technologizer.com/2023/04/15/the-end-of-computer-magazines-in-america/ https://www.technologizer.com/2023/04/15/the-end-of-computer... Comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35583853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35583853 ...instead of the Hackaday summary ripoff
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago>> But how would the Beatles catalog be different if George, Paul, John, and Ringo needed day jobs? You’d imagine they might produce less and maybe even very different music. Maybe, for pop music. And maybe music in general would be a very different affair if it wasn't such big business. In fact, in many ways it already is. See, I've always listened to metal music and I've played in a couple metal bands. Those were the typical small-time bands that are basically just a bunch of metalhead kids come together to play the music they like. And we did. With one of those bands we even had a bit of a career, playing gigs and getting people headbanging and stagediving in a venue away from home. This was in a mythical land, in a sprawling metropolis under an ancient citadel and you will never know the names of the bands that became legend, because they were local, locally grown and locally forgotten, legend. But these were good times, and they continue to be. This was music from the people, for the people. A real folk music for the 20th century, the kind of thing that big corporations will never soil with their greedy, all-withering touch. And none of those bands were professional, and this was their strength, and what made them valuable. The value of the recognition of the big-name bands is not to be dismissed, because, ultimately, what all we kids really wanted was to be stars, ourselves, to stand on a big stage with thousands of fans at our feet, like Halford or Hetfield. But we didn't really think that would be the outcome, and still we played, and enjoyed ourselves, and made music magickal. And still do. Have a look at the Encyclopedia Metallum. I bet 75% of the bands you'll find there have never seen a dime from their art, and they all have day jobs - day jobs that support their music. Because who cares? Just make the music you want to listen to. Proof: https://youtu.be/lq4dh_bAWoQ https://youtu.be/lq4dh_bAWoQ
- zitterbewegung 3y agoFor alt rock / indie bands half of the fun is saying oh you haven’t heard of the band x ? One time when I was at university someone was impressed that I listened to Oh Mandy by the Spinto Band
- hotsauceror 3y agoThis was one thing that I loved about metal that I always felt was missing from "pop" music - the community, and the sense of having grown organically from little roots. Guys and girls putting in the work, paying their dues, because they loved the music. And guys and girls showing up to support them, in shitty clubs and local festivals, buying the shitty merch and the shitty self-produced demo tapes. You went because you supported the community, and you were all in it together, us long-haired weirdos. Sure, some of the bands were terrible. But you went, all the same, and you cheered for them because they were doing their best to get this turkey off the ground. And some of them were NOT terrible, and excellent times were had, and experiences were experienced, and memories were made, and by god look at this thing we did! These guys fucking rocked! And I always felt like something was missing, when I heard pop songs on the radio. Where did Tiffany or Oingo Boingo come from? Where did they put in their dues? Did they put in their dues, at all? Who went to see them, and where? Did they all just sing in church and then went to some cattle call audition? Where was the not-quite-national pop scene, the local club acts for these kinds of music? It seemed like it arose explicitly from the board room and the accounting department, instead of growing organically like the hip hops kids and the rappers and metalheads and punks.
- GnarfGnarf 3y agoThe loss of magazines in general is a shame. I spent many magical hours perusing the back issues of Scientific American in my school library in the 60's. Some of the "Amateur Scientist" projects I built steered my career. As a teenager, I grew up avidly reading weekly Time magazine during lunch.
- greedo 3y agoI used to head down to UCSD's library when I was in grade school to read tons of their military magazines that most public libraries couldn't afford. Jane's Defence Weekly, Aviation Week etc.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoWistful comment on the site: https://hackaday.com/2023/06/01/farewell-american-computer-magazines/#comment-6648444 https://hackaday.com/2023/06/01/farewell-american-computer-m... """ How many times did computer magazines predict the paperless office? It finally caught up with them """ On the nose, it's been quite a few years since I've seem the "paperless office" mentioned - faded into the foreground, I guess ...
- hotsauceror 3y agoMy dad subscribed to one of the hobbyist computer magazines back in the 70s and 80s, I think it was Creative Computing. One summer, they printed out the BASIC source code of Colossal Cave, I don't remember which platform though. Probably a PET or a TI-99. Our whole family took turns typing in the source code on our IBM PC XT, it took us a couple of weeks in our spare time, and with no one knowing how to type besides mom and dad. Dad showed me how to make the necessary tweaks to get it to run on our flavor of BASIC, and then we played it all summer. I definitely felt something click into place, after that experience. I ended up doing the same thing years later on my Commodore 64, manually typing in the assembly code that they printed out in Compute!, so that I could play various homegrown games. You could subscribe to the magazine and get all the monthly featured programs on floppy disk, but that was for Rich People, not peasants like us. You talk about mind-numbing... A9 00 C0 A0 D4 01 03 05 0A! for pages and pages and pages.
- 300bps 3y agoMy parents bought me an early Commodore 64 for Christmas in 1982 and I spent untold days typing in source code from Compute!'s Gazette which was the Commodore-dedicated companion to Compute!. Their MLX system for entering assembly language programs with a checksum was an amazing way to enter programs from a magazine. I remember enlisting my sister to help me type in the programs and I told her, "Type the line of numbers here. If you type one wrong, it will tell you." She quickly retorted, "If it know what's write, why doesn't the computer type it in!?" You talk about mind-numbing... A9 00 C0 A0 D4 01 03 05 0A Apparently I did that too much because I can convert that to 6502 Assembly language in my head.
- hotsauceror 3y agoYes! Compute!'s Gazette, that was it! Every month users would submit their homegrown works, like "I made a game that can display 16 sprites at once instead of 8 because of this clever IRQ trick" and it would contain the full assembly code, along with their checksum like you said. Compute!'s Gazette.
- 3y ago
- bluedino 3y agoAs a kid I filled out a reader service card in a magazine, and said I was in charge of a $5,000,000 budget at my company. I started getting all kinds of trade magazines like InfoWorld, NetworkWolrd, eWeek, computer graphics and publishing-related ones that I can't remember the names of. Most of it was over my head and general business news (Adobe buys Quark!) but it was fun to read about all this stuff.
- dylan604 3y agoi loved those types of cards as a kid. we used to use them as pranks by filling them out "for" someone unbeknownst to them. of course, that is still something i do to this day. websites that request a birthday gets january 1st of the oldest year available. haven't seen the budget option any more as i assume they know exactly who you are with all of the tracking. tangentially, we'd send the postage paid envelopes back full of any random thing other than what the recipient would be expecting.
- nologic01 3y agoSharing code started with the tips and tricks pages of computer magazines. In a sense the open source movement originated there.
- walrus01 3y agoDoes anyone remember when Computer Shopper reached 800 pages? In probably 1992/1993.
- WalterBright 3y ago> But how would the Beatles catalog be different if George, Paul, John, and Ringo needed day jobs? They played professionally for years without making or selling recordings. They also made a ton of money off of touring. They became successful through radio play.
- WalterBright 3y ago> although the website has suffered enough bit rot, I’m not sure any of it has survived other than, maybe, on the Wayback machine All of the blog articles I wrote for Dr Dobbs are here: https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/index.html https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/index.html Dr Dobbs was very nice to me and graciously allowed me to do this. I miss Dr Dobbs.
- kjellsbells 3y agoI really miss print. To the extent that if a press clipping service was to take the kind of blog posts and articles that appear on HN, print, bind them and ship them to me, I would sign up. There's something about being able to browse and engage with print that is superior to screens. Now get off my lawn, you young whippersnappers!
- mmphosis 3y agohttps://juiced.gs/ https://juiced.gs/
- pengaru 3y agoNothing has ever come close to delivering the experience of reading new Dr. Dobbs Journal and Game Developer Magazine issues endlessly on the toilet.
- carldaddy 3y agoIs there any online content today similar to these magazines?
- glonq 3y agoI grew up in the middle of nowhere (Yukon), so in the 1980's these magazines taught me how to program 8-bit computers. And taught me about the entire world of computing and technology in the early 1990's. I would not be where I am today if it weren't for all that. It's wild to think how quick we went from "exposure to tidbits of curated information at a gradual pace" to "all of human knowledge at your fingertips anywhere any time".
- Communitivity 3y agoI learned a lot from Dr. Dobbs journal and Linux Journal. You could get articles at every level, beginner to advanced, and they had enough details to encourage experimentation. I had many issues saved up at one point of those two, plus Computer Shopper and Byte. No idea where they are now, either in a box somewhere or gone, sadly.
- rbanffy 3y agoI learned so much from BYTE, Creative Computing, Dr Dobbs, Nibble, UnixWorld, and so many others. But... I still receive my print subscriptions of IEEE's Computer and Spectrum and ACM's Communications of the ACM. Always great reads in physical format. Reading them on a tablet definitely doesn't feel the same.
- bigbillheck 3y agoI've always found CACM to be disappointingly lightweight and low-content.
- vram22 3y agoDDJ and CUJ were two of favorite computer mags for a while.
- pjmlp 3y agoSame here, since 1990 until they closed shop.
- epolanski 3y agoAre there quality magazines still being released about programming, even if just digitally?
- c7b 3y agoThere are some excellent ones in German by Heise, check out https://www.heise.de/select/ https://www.heise.de/select/ There are others too, there's still a fairly healthy market for IT magazines in Germany. They also still come as print publications. The iX magazine is focused on software development. Not affiliated in any way btw.
- rwmj 3y agohttps://LWN.net https://LWN.net if that counts as a magazine.
- usr1106 3y agoI am a subscriber. But wasn't the topic mostly about printed magazines? lwn.net has never been one.
- linguae 3y agoThere's a fantastic Japanese magazine called Software Design that is not only available digitally, but is still being physically printed. The magazine covers trending topics in programming, software development, and Linux systems administration. I always pick up a copy whenever I visit Japan. https://gihyo.jp/magazine/SD https://gihyo.jp/magazine/SD
- layer8 3y agoWith respect to trending topics, it’s interesting to see “What is Clean Architecture” as the headline in mid-2023.
- yason 3y agoIn Finland there's a delightful volunteer-driven computing culture and programming magazine called Skrolli and it's the only magazine I've subscribed to since the 1990's when paper computer magazines still held a meaningful place in the lives of people who were into computers. The regular issues are in Finnish, of course, but they did a couple of international editions some years ago to get an idea of what's some typical content in the magazine: https://skrolli.fi/2016.1e.illuminatus.pdf https://skrolli.fi/2016.1e.illuminatus.pdf https://skrolli.fi/2017.1e.platforms.pdf https://skrolli.fi/2017.1e.platforms.pdf