Recently I subscribed to Dr.Dobb’s Journal. In the second issue, there were some strange announcements from Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Erickson. He wrote that they were changing to Dr. Dobb’s Report, which would be a section of Information Week magazine. However the section would only run once a month. There were some other comments about expanding their online offerings.There was no statement that came out and said the Dr. Dobb’s was going out of business. It sure felt that way though. I actually already subscribe to Information Week. So I saw the part of this week’s magazine which was the Dr. Dobb’s Report. However it was not the same as Dr. Dobb’s Journal. The last issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal that I received had a lot of great articles on Cloud Computing. Perhaps they made it an especially good issue given it was the last.
This is not an isolated event. Computing programming magazines have been going out of print left and right. I can’t think of one that still exists in a stand alone print edition. The closest thing I see on the magazine rack are magazines for Linux system administration. I guess everybody gets their information online these days. I personally prefer reading a physical magazine. Perhaps I too am partially to blame as I did not subscribe to the programming magazines for a while.
I do recall Dr. Dobb’s Journal from the old days. Somewhere I read that it was 30 years old. It was probably one of the last print magazines of its kind. I don’t know about anyone else. But I for one will miss it.
