A Bit About Byte Magazine | Hacker News Reader

A Bit About Byte Magazine

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Related threads about Byte Magazine itself (I've omitted submissions of specific articles/issues since there are so many of those):

Byte Magazine – Archived Copies on Internet Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35960210 - May 2023 (2 comments)

Byte Magazine 1975-1995 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34397245 - Jan 2023 (98 comments)

Ask HN: Is there a modern equivalent of Byte Magazine? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538743 - Aug 2022 (8 comments)

Vintage Byte Magazine Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28684406 - Sept 2021 (94 comments)

The BYTE magazine covers by Robert Tinney - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607038 - Sept 2021 (66 comments)

BYTE Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683184 - Aug 2018 (111 comments)

Byte Magazine Covers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299544 - March 2015 (1 comment)

Byte magazine archives - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113561 - July 2013 (15 comments)

Living in Europe (but not in the UK), I have similar nostalgic feelings for the UK magazine Personal Computer World (PCW). The library in the tiny town (5k people) where I grew up somehow had a subscription for PCW in the 80s and 90s. Every month there was a new treasure trove to read. I read it so hard from like 1986 and onwards. (I kind of learned English by reading PCW.)

It's pretty obvious that PCW was modelled after Byte.

(There's a partial scanned collection here: https://archive.org/details/personalcomputerworld?sort=date)

I loved PCW -- I ended up writing for it in the early nineties, and was ridiculously proud that I had that chance.

Byte and PCW are the two magazines I really miss. I know we have a wealth of information available to us now that we didn't back then so I shouldn't be sad... and yet :'( If someone put out a physical general computing magazine of a similar quality today I'd subscribe in an instant, but I suppose there's just not enough cranks like me to make it viable.

Speaking of quality material, any plans to revive NTK?

The German Heise publishing house continues to publish the Byte/PCW-sort-of-like magazine "c't". Useful for keeping any German language skills alive if you're into that.

Judging from the latest cover it's at a ~00s technical level (on a PCW Magazine scale) - and they are diversifing, now including things like heat pumps and smart thermostats, heh:

https://heise.cloudimg.io/v7/_shop-heise-de_/assets/a/6/0/e/...

Thanks for the tip. I'm sort of background-aware of it, but as I don't read or speak German and online translation lacks a certain flavour, it's not really an option for me. Good to note that there are a few hanging on in other markets - and it certainly had a good reputation.

One that I found that was a "close but no cigar" incidentally was the Pi magazine "The MagPi"¹ - but it's a bit thin both physically and in content. I may yet subscribe, though, just in the hope of demonstrating a market exists!

¹ https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/

I agree about the MagPi; it's close. I think it would work great as eh, toilet reading material though. Lots of small stories/projects.

A friend of mine refers to that as "shiterature" :D

It does feel a bit like a charity/nostalgia project, but I am still glad it exists. I'd like to check out HackSpace as well, since I kind of enjoyed Make: in its heyday.

I didn't know about HackSpace, so thanks for that; I've ordered a copy. We shall see.

Time to learn German I guess!

This would be more viable if I wasn't learning Swedish already. Also I'm kinda lazy and it would take years to get to the level of enjoyment of reading fluently. With my luck they'd go bust in the interim.

If there's a good tech magazine in Swedish, however, that would be perfect :)

> physical general computing magazine of a similar quality today I'd subscribe in an instant

Same here. Of course, it's not the information itself, which is almost certainly available elsewhere.

The curation provided by a high quality magazine is all the value. I get hundreds of potentially interesting articles to read every day from countless email list subscriptions. I don't have time for that so I don't read any. If I could subscribe to something that curates the absolute best content into a monthly package.. where do I send money?

Haha! Weirdly, I'm going to be spending this month trying to see if something like that makes sense.

I worked in VNU House during the late 89s on another mag. Always wanted to work on PCW never made it, but at least I got to go to press conferences with Kewney, Tebbut et al.

Are you one of the moving forces behind NTK? If so, thank you for brightening my Fridays for so long.

NTK?

The NTK newsletter I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_to_Know_(newsletter)

Likewise for me with PC Plus, which enabled (via their "Super{Disk,CD}") access to professional programming tools and Linux distributions in the days before internet access with sufficient bandwidth to download them was widespread.

Sadly it took a turn towards being consumer-focused in the early 2000s and then died.

I loved Byte. I was a subscriber to the bitter end. I learned C from Byte, which lead me to developing a C compiler (also from a Byte article series) in 6502. Along with a number of data structures and algorithms. If Byte were around today, I would happily buy it. Though I could do without the ad-fest it became in later years.

>I loved Byte. I was a subscriber to the bitter end. I learned C from Byte, which lead me to developing a C compiler (also from a Byte article series) in 6502.

I hope you meant the processor, not the year ;)

I loved BYTE too. And congrats on creating a compiler.

I assume they meant they wrote it in 6502 assembly

Heck yes, I know.

I've programmed in it myself, on both the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro. I liked that instruction set. Those were the days of 8- and 16-bit computers with slow speed and low RAM (compared to today), when people used all kinds of clever tricks to save a byte here or a clock cycle there. Good fun.

We studied assembly as part of our ancient literature class because so few written examples of languages from that era of humanity still exist to this day. We have had heated discussions over the pronunciation of NOP and BRK. Is it "no-op" or "nope"? Is it "brake" as in to stop? Or "break" as to damage? Should we say "brk" or "berk"?

Classic (pun intended)!

Welcome back to the future, I mean, forward to the past.

I was a devoted Byte subscriber and reader for years. I even bought a poster or two of covers I liked from Robert Tinney. Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" was my first read of any issue. Having embarked on an experimental science career by the mid-80s, I was always impressed by how he could present a new, /working/ hardware project every month.

I loved this magazine - could not afford a subscription but our uni had it but you could not take it out - many hours spend reading and making photocopies of the articles.

The NextCube , Transputer and the wacky Linn CPU.

And a Jerry Pournelle column in every issue.

Oy, how often his column would send me into a rage. He sold himself is just a real user reporting what it was like to use a given machine or bit of software he was reviewing. He was anything but. He'd talk about the frustration with some machine or software and because he was Pournelle, he'd contact the company and the owner or an engineer would drive to Pournelle's house to troubleshoot the problem. Then Pournelle would gush that while things weren't perfect, their support was great.

Or some company would give him their $10,000 top end computer system and he'd state that the fact it was given to him didn't affect his opinions about the system, because he really used the system and that it was he, a power user, who was doing the company a favor by shaking the bugs out of their systems. I didn't buy it for a second.

Perhaps it is like some podcasts where you like it or dislike it more based on the personalities of the hosts more than the content. Because I have never been a reader of science fiction, I saw Pournelle as just a privileged curmudgeon and wasn't tickled that a famous SF author was sharing his personal life with me.

> Or some company would give him their $10,000 top end computer system and he'd state that the fact it was given to him didn't affect his opinions about the system, because he really used the system and that it was he, a power user, who was doing the company a favor by shaking the bugs out of their systems. I didn't buy it for a second.

Pournelle was never reluctant to criticize. He discussed the Epson QX-10 because he really wanted to like the bundled Valdocs software, but repeatedly excoriated over several versions its horrible performance. Pournelle was always scathing about copy protection, even if he otherwise liked the software. When discussing CP/M transportables, Pournelle preferred the super-expensive Otrona but rightly said that the Osborne and Kaypro were the Volkswagen better suited for most people in terms of price/performance. Etc., etc.

The one time I met Jerry Pournelle was when we peed together.

I was in the men's room at the West Coast Computer Faire, and Jerry walked up to the urinal next to me. We made some small talk (not Smalltalk!) while we did our business, and I quickly realized he was drunk as a skunk.

There was a moment of panic when I thought to myself, "Please, let his aim hold true!"

It did, and we both left unscathed and unsplashed.

Too bad. You could instead be telling the story about the time you got peed on by Jerry Pournelle.

You were right not to buy his bullshit about being objective, and all the free stuff, personal support, valuable services, and big favors he demanded not affecting his reviews. He paved the way for other charlatan tech gatekeeper shills like Robert Scoble. You NEVER want to do or owe somebody like that a favor.

Jerry Pournelle (nee POURNE@MC) was a belligerent alcoholic and an over-entitled far-right-wing nutcase (which naturally go hand in hand), who would not only extort companies with computer hardware and software he wanted for free, but even blackmail university research labs "run by a bunch of communists" to give him all the free products and priceless personal support and services that he demanded, otherwise he would drunkenly threaten (and carry through) to publically badmouth them, not only in his Byte article and BIX, but also (in the case of the MIT-AI Lab providing him with his precious free ARPANET access in the early 80's) to his "Pentagon friends" and "reporter friends" and "even the House Armed Services Committee".

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/pourne-smut.html

>"I find this thoroughly distasteful. If you have some authority to order me off the net, do so. If not, leave me alone." -Drunk Jerry Pournelle from his free POURNE@MIT-MC account generously provided by the MIT-AI Lab

>"I'm almost tempted to let him take his marbles and floppy disks and go home." -Glenn S Burke from GSB@MIT-MC

>"Personally, I'd just turn off his account. It's not like it's the first time, and he not only flaunts his use of our machines but stabs us in the back with grumblings about why he doesn't like this or that program of ours when he gets a chance. (Am thinking particularly of an article he wrote which condemned Lisp for reasons amounting to little more than his ignorance, but which cited Teach-Lisp in a not-friendly light... The man has learned nothing from his presence on MC and sets a bad example of what people might potentially accomplish there. I'd rather recycle his account for some bright 12-yr-old...)" -Kent Pitman from KMP@MIT-MC

>"I don't know whether you guys have read Niven and Pournelle's _Oath_of_Fealty_, but "Think of it as evolution in action." is their thinly disguised rallying cry for do-it-yourself social Darwinism. It would be so, so sweet to shove it back in his face." -John G. Aspinall from JGA@MIT-MC

>"I.e., little jerry isn't going to get my sympathy if big bad leigh klotz picks on him." -Glenn S Burk from GSB@MIT-MC

>"KLOTZ: 5'8"? POURNE: >6'4" Fuck it. Flush him." -David Vinayak Wallace from GUMBY@MIT-MC

>"It's funny this should appear in my mail to-day. I had lunch this afternoon with McCarthy, and in the course of conversation (we were discussing SF) he mentioned that someone at MC had flushed Pournelle... As for pournelle himself: He really thinks that WE are trying to annoy HIM??? Of course if he's vitriolic enough and all the obnoxious turists vanish (leaving the nice ones of course) then he may have atoned without realising it..." -David Vinayak Wallace from GUMBY@MIT-MC

>"You might consider contacting Byte about publishing some note from us to appear simultaneously with this. This is only important if pournelle is going to say what I think he is going to say (what JMC [John McCarthy] told me pournelle was claiming), which is that the reason his account was flushed was because he favors the Strategic Defense Initiative, and MC is run by a bunch of communists. This will no doubt please darpa immensely." -Patrick G. Sobalvarro from PGS@MIT-MC

>"One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense. Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful; now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee." -Drunk Jerry Pournelle in ARPA-Exile on BIX

I wonder how many taxpayer's dollars Jerry Pournelle wasted trying to get the House Armed Services Committee to fix his IT problems.

> Oy, how often his column would send me into a rage. He sold himself is just a real user reporting what it was like to use a given machine or bit of software he was reviewing. He was anything but.

A parody:

    I called Jan Toady, president of Hyena, who indicated that a helicopter
    of ground-assault technical assistants was hovering near Fractal Manor
    24 hours a day and that all I had to do was give the word and they'd
    parachute in.  (Based on my own experience, I think Hyena offers the
    best service in the business, and not just because I mention their
    products every month in my column which millions of avid computer
    buyers read either.  I bet you'd get the same service I do.  Recommended.)
    I chuckled and said I'd try to puzzle it out a little more myself.  He
    said okay and then talked me into accepting a free laptop with
    holographic display and telepathic mouse.  A nice guy.

* http://www.panix.com/~clp/humor/computers/general/Jerry-Pour...

Also the dude (remember he had quite a hairdo) who built his own hardware - soldering and board level type of stuff.

That was Steve Ciarcia, his Byte column was called Circuit Cellar

Thanks - glad to see he is still around and retired it seems.

I think he was a polarizing figure, but I was happy that somebody wrote about the computer experience at all.

How Jerry Pournelle got kicked off the ARPANET:

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/pourne-smut.html

I don't remember the Linn, have a pointer? Search turned this up, which sounds wacky (written in Forth) but it ran on an 8088: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linn_9000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekursiv

A number of other computer mags have vanished without a trace, like MicroCornucopia and PC Tech Journal.

Dr. Dobb's magazine.

Was about to post a link to archived Dr. Dobbs articles [1] (so not without a trace) only to find out that actual content seems to have vanished/nav is broken.

Like Dr. Dobbs until 2015, BYTE continued with online-only content until about 2011. What's worth discussing here is infeasibility to publish quality content on Google's web financed by targetted ads working for Google, and Google alone.

[1]: https://drdobbs.com/

Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia

"Running Light Without Overbyte"

https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal

MicroCornucopia ceased publication when Dave Thompson got burned out. I think all the issues are available at: https://bitsavers.org/magazines/Micro_Cornucopia/

You can find all the PC Tech Journal issues here:

https://www.pcjs.org/documents/magazines/pctj/

There's a Facebook group devoted to the old computer magazines:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/521427671543144

I enjoyed the magazine from its initial issues until the mid 80s when I pretty much stopped reading it. I must say that it did have some of the most interesting and attractive cover art of and technical magazines.

I always got a laugh at Byte's motto: "A Small Systems Journal." At about one inch thick, it was anything but small.

mostly adverts. but i did like it!

I always assumed they the small referred to the systems (i.e. microcomputers) rather than the size of the journal. I doubt the term "personal computer" even existed when Byte was born.

It's an inside joke. Byte at its peak had some issues that were nearly an inch thick and could easily be used as a murder weapon.

> I always assumed they the small referred to the systems (i.e. microcomputers) rather than the size of the journal.

That is correct.

Adjectives don't nest. Lists of adjectives all apply to the subject not each other. Each adjectives applies without reference to others.

I’d argue that in “dark red paint” that most people would say that dark modifies red rather than paint.

(Same/maybe more clear in the phrase “candy apple red paint”)

That's why God invented Parens.

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1979-08

Well compared to Computer Shopper, Byte was small. I recall walking out of the book store with the oversized Computer Shopper, roughly two inches thick, newsprint contents. It was like walking out with a phone book every month.

I recall when they went to a smaller format. The world had changed. Sigh.

BYTE came close, but not quite as thick as PC Magazine, which hit 800 pages in December 1983 <https://books.google.com/books?id=05wAGZQlo9QC&pg=PP1>, forcing it to appear every two weeks.

I have tons of computer magazines from the 80's and 90's in the attic, including many years of Byte. A monthly trek to a nearby city to grab the mags was part of nerd culture back in the day as it was the near only way to get computer info back in the days before the www.

Brings back memories. Yeah, byte, pcw and dr Dobbs journal were special.

I really looked forward to each issue of Dr Dobbs Journal, and Creative Computing!

Previous discussion/nostalgia for Byte:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772529

PC Magazine was good for a while too, before it became ad-enshittified.

I particularly liked the Utilities series in it.

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