Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site bmcg.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!trwrba!cepu!bmcg!yrdbrd From: yrdbrd@bmcg.UUCP (Larry J. Huntley) Newsgroups: net.analog,net.micro Subject: Is There A Doctor In The House? Is He Alive and Well? Message-ID: <1824@bmcg.UUCP> Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 18:41:18 EDT Article-I.D.: bmcg.1824 Posted: Tue Aug 27 18:41:18 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 13:11:57 EDT Organization: Burroughs Corp. ASG, San Diego, CA. Lines: 95 Xref: watmath net.analog:449 net.micro:11779 Another Magazine Falls to the Weenies September, 1985 -- After nearly ten fruitful years of publishing articles of general interest to the widely diverse audience of the microcomputing community, the current issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal arrived today, looking forlorn and tired. Gone is the Annual Forth Issue. Gone is the "Running Light Without Overbyte" state- ment. The very heart seems to have been wrung out of the old boy and left somewhere between San Ramon (home of the magazine's original publishers, People's Computer Company) and Palo Alto (where M & T Publishing, Inc., the current publishers, reside.) Can this be the beginning of the end of what was once a highly respected magazine among the true hackers? Let us look inside and examine the organs of this venerable old soldier. First the table of contents.....Hmm. An article about "fgrep." An article about sort algorithms, written in C. TEX for the IBM PC. Compiler Designs. MSDOS disk input. More compilers. UNIX to process communication. Signals. Search/sort algorithms. Hard disk interface for the Mac. CP/M Exchange. 16-bit Toolbox (for an 8-bit machine.) Well, it appears that everyone in the world is writing in C, running it under UNIX on an IBM-PC. But perhaps not; let's look further... Page 6. A photo of a person who looks like he's worried about whether or not he made the lease payment on the Bimmer this month or if he has enough Perrier in the refrigerator. He's actually bemoaning the problems of publishing a magazine for the advanced programmer. Aha! So that's what he's up to! Tells us that DDJ will be looking more closely at advanced processors (like the 8088, one wonders) while not abandoning users of the 8080/6502 class. No more hardware issues. Talks a lot about assembly language. Doesn't say they will publish any assembly language programs; just talks about it. Sigh. Page 8. Letters. Some quotes: "Do not include hardware articles. Other magazines do a fine job of covering hardware...If you expand your scope to include hardware, you will dilute your focus..." [This guy should be required to name two magazines that "do a fine job of covering hardware."] "..I'm in favor of semi-annual hardware issues.." [So am I, but then what do I know?] "..Why not start a separate journal, a hardware companion to DDJ?.." [Good idea. Then let's NOT sell it to some yuppi-fied publishing company.] "..there are already plenty of articles on hardware tinkering [TINKERING?!] in other journals and it is out of character for DDJ...In these days of (almost) standardized and universally available hardware, the audience for useful software articles is larger...blah..blah..blab..mumble..mutter.. mince.." [Here's another one who thinks that hardware is something that you put in a louvered plastic cabinet, shake twice, punch the reset button, and it types "login:" on the screen. I wondered how he'd like it if all the magazines in the world published their articles in BASIC and never got any more meaningful than "Sprite Motion on the Commodore 64 in BASIC."] In CP/M Exchange we are told that CP/M Plus has "Level D" support from DRI. I take it that Level D = 0. I wonder what that means for 2.2, 2.X, or 1.4; Level Z? CP/M Plus will no longer be sold unconfigured. The Ampro Little Board is reviewed -- almost a hardware article! Careful there, DDJ. Don't want to be out of character. Meta Question: When is someone going to publish an honest-to-gosh COMPUTER magazine? You know, with beginner-to-advanced articles on hardware and software, packages and techniques, chips and languages, snatches fo code and public-domain operating systems, that is not driven to one particular market. I'm TIRED to death of C and UNIX and IBM PC's. I always used DDJ as a stick to beat back BYTE, but now what? (Snivel...been waiting all year for the FORTH issue, and now this. Damn chaos...gripe..) More Depressed Than Usual, 'brd -- Larry J. Huntley Burroughs Corporation Distributed Systems Group MS-703 10850 Via Frontera San Diego, CA 92128 (619) 485-4544 There was a passel of them Theosophists at the other end of the bar, raisin' the Devil. They had him about ten feet off the floor, and I could tell by the red clay on his hooves and his black aura that he was up to no good, so I stumped up to him and said, "Sam Buku, there ain't enough room in this life-cycle fer the both of us!" And the little devil up and challenged me to a game of Ten- Card Tarot, Pentacles wild. I seen him deal a High Priestess off the bottom of the deck, and then...