Wednesday, January 07, 2009

R.I.P. Dr. Dobb's

In the busy-ness of the holiday season you may have missed the quiet passing of Dr. Dobb's Journal. 

The official story is that the magazine is evolving into a section within InformationWeek, but that's just spin.  Dr. Dobb's is gone.

I suppose this was inevitable.  I've been writing for several years about the decline of print publications for developers.  Like most of them, this one has been looking thin and sickly for quite some time.  Sadder still, their final issue featured a huge grammatical error on the front cover.  I'm sure this was not the way the DDJ staff wanted things to end.

Still, the passing of this magazine is rather historic for our young industry.  Dr. Dobb's first started publication in 1976, about the same time that Microsoft and Apple were founded.  A significant slice of today's programmers weren't even born yet.  For many people, the last few years of 64-page issues are all they have ever seen of DDJ.  They don't remember that Dr. Dobb's Journal was a pretty great magazine back in its day.

It really was.