The End of Computer Magazines in America | Hacker News Reader

The End of Computer Magazines in America

technologizer.com

54 pointsohjeez6 comments

I miss the magazines of the Golden Age era. At least in Europe there are some retro magazines doing their best to gain a foodhold in establishing themselves. Retro, Freeze64, just to name a few.

After 10 years with kindle, I more and more revert back to paperback. Not due to nostalgic feelings, mainly because I work with them.

Some people on retrogaming podcasts have mentioned trying to buy yet again all the magazines that they gave away in the past.

In my view, computer magazines have been in decline since the demise of Byte and Doctor Dobbs. Most current magazines are hardly more than advertising slicks. Publications by ACM, IEEE, etc. are still generally good.

It's been all downhill since Kilobaud and Transactor. 8 bits oughta be enough for anybody! (Well, ok, 16-bit addressing was good.) Whenever it was that the 'desktop metaphor' showed up. ('Magic Desk'? srsly?) And computers and synthesizers became 'workstations'.

> I’m declaring the demise of these two dead-tree publications as the end of computer magazines in this country.

According to TFA, 2600 and the various computer magazines in one of the photos featured in the article don’t count since their publishers are based overseas. 2600 is from NYC, but it has characteristics that disqualify it as a proper magazine.

- Computer Shopper (US) was nearly 50% as thick as yellow pages.

- PC Magazine varied from 30-50% of Computer Shopper

- PC World was comparable to maybe slightly thinner

- BYTE preceded all of the above with homebrew computing

For software development, there were:

- C/C++ User's Journal

- Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) (dr. dobb's journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia)

In the unique department:

- Whole Earth Catalog (and Whole Earth Access stores, and The WELL)

Speaking of BBSes, tinyfugue (originated from D&D MUDs) was used in Stanford's IT department as a networked chat app like Slack or IRC for sometime. I wonder if they kept it going. Many shops are moving away from IRC and onto apps like Mattermost.

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