![]() Issue #1 | |
Editor | Andrew Binstock |
---|---|
Categories | Computer magazines |
Frequency | Monthly |
Circulation | 120,000 |
First issue | January 1976 |
Final issue | February 2009 (print) |
Company | People's Computer Company M&T Publishing Miller Freeman CMP Media United Business Media UBM Technology Group Informa PLC |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Website | www.drdobbs.com (formerly www.ddj.com) |
ISSN | 1044-789X |
Dr. Dobb's Journal [1] (often shortened to Dr. Dobb's or DDJ) was a monthly magazine published in the United States by UBM Technology Group, part of UBM. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. When launched in 1976, DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. In its last years of publication, it was distributed as a PDF monthly, although the principal delivery of Dr. Dobb's content was through the magazine's website. Publication ceased at the end of 2014, [2] with the archived website continuing to be available online.
Bob Albrecht edited an eccentric newspaper about computer games programmed in BASIC with the same name as the tiny nonprofit educational corporation that he had founded, People's Computer Company (PCC). Dennis Allison [1] was a longtime computer consultant on the San Francisco Peninsula and sometime instructor at Stanford University. The Dobbs title was based on a mashup of the first letters of their names: Dennis and Bob.
In the first three quarterly issues of the PCC newspaper published in 1975, Albrecht had published articles written by Allison, describing how to design and implement a stripped-down version of an interpreter for the BASIC language, with limited features to be easier to implement. He called it Tiny BASIC. At the end of the final part, Allison asked computer hobbyists who implemented it to send their implementations to PCC, and they would circulate copies of any implementations to anyone who sent a self-addressed stamped envelope. Allison said, Let us stand on each others' shoulders; not each others' toes.
The journal was originally intended to be a three-issue xerographed publication. Titled dr. dobb's journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia (with the subtitle Running Light Without Overbyte) it was created to distribute the implementations of Tiny BASIC. The original title was created by Eric Bakalinsky, who did occasional paste-up work for PCC. Dobb's was a contraction of Dennis and Bob. It was at a time when computer memory was very expensive, so compact coding was important. Microcomputer hobbyists needed to avoid using too many bytes of memory.
After the first photocopies were mailed to those who had sent stamped addressed envelopes, PCC was flooded with requests that the publication become an ongoing periodical devoted to general microcomputer software.
PCC agreed, and hired Jim Warren as its first editor. He immediately changed the title to Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia prior to publishing the first issue in January 1976. The title refers to "jumping through hoops" (calisthenics) and "pulling teeth" (orthodontia).
Jim Warren was DDJ's editor for about a year and a half. [3] While he went on to make a splash with his series of West Coast Computer Faires, [4] subsequent DDJ editors [5] like Marlin Ouverson, [6] [7] Hank Harrison, Michael Swaine and Jonathan Erickson appear to have focused on the journalistic and social aspects of the young but growing microcomputer industry. Eventually PCC, the non-profit corporation, sold DDJ to a commercial publisher. [5]
The newsletter's content was originally pure enthusiast material. Initial interest circled around the Tiny BASIC interpreter, but Warren broadened that to include a variety of other programming topics, as well as a strong consumer bias, especially needed in the chaotic early days of microcomputing. All of the content came from volunteer contributors, with Steve Wozniak as one of the better known of them. Other contributors included Jef Raskin, later credited as a leader in the Macintosh development; Hal Hardenberg, the originator of DTACK Grounded an early newsletter for Motorola 68000 based software and hardware; and Gary Kildall, who had created CP/M, the first disk operating system for microcomputers which was not married to proprietary hardware.
Computer program source code published during the early years include:
There were also projects for computer speech synthesis and computer music systems. [8] The March 1985 issue "10(3)" printed Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto" a call for participation in the then-new free software movement.
In later years,[ when? ] the magazine received contributions from developers all over the world working in application development and embedded systems across most programming languages and platforms. The magazine's focus became more professional. Columnists included Michael Swaine, Allen Holub and Verity Stob, the pseudonymous British programmer.
The title was later shortened to Dr. Dobb's Journal, then changed to Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools as it became more popular. The magazine later reverted to Dr. Dobb's Journal with the selling line, "The World of Software Development", with the abbreviation DDJ also used for the corresponding website. In January 2009 Jonathan Erickson, the editor-in-chief, announced the magazine would cease monthly print publication, become a section of InformationWeek called Dr Dobb's Report, [9] a website and monthly digital PDF edition.
The primary Dr. Dobb's content streams at the end were the Dr. Dobb's website, Dr. Dobb's Journal (the monthly PDF magazine, which had different content from the website) and a weekly newsletter, Dr. Dobb's Update. In addition, Dr. Dobb's continued to run the Jolt Awards and, since 1995, the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award. Regular bloggers include Scott Ambler, Walter Bright, Andrew Koenig, and Al Williams. Adrian Bridgwater edited the news section beginning in 2010.
On December 16, 2014, an article by editor-in-chief Andrew Binstock announced that Dr. Dobb's would cease publication of new articles at the end of 2014. [10] [11] [ needs context ] [2] Archived articles are still available online. While no longer distributed, Dr. Dobb's is widely considered[ by whom? ] an important and influential source for the history of the personal computer industry.[ citation needed ]
386BSD is a discontinued operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) that was developed by couple Lynne and William Jolitz. Released on March 17, 1992, it was the first fully operational Unix operating system to be completely free and open source.
Tiny BASIC is a family of dialects of the BASIC programming language that can fit into 4 or fewer KBs of memory. Tiny BASIC was designed by Dennis Allison and the People's Computer Company (PCC) in response to the open letter published by Bill Gates complaining about users pirating Altair BASIC, which sold for $150. Tiny BASIC was intended to be a completely free version of BASIC that would run on the same early microcomputers.
Li-Chen Wang is an American computer engineer, best known for his Palo Alto Tiny BASIC for Intel 8080-based microcomputers. He was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and made significant contributions to the software for early microcomputer systems from Tandy Corporation and Cromemco. He made early use of the word copyleft, in Palo Alto Tiny BASIC's distribution notice "@COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED" in June 1976.
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that aspect of the Silicon Valley information technology industrial complex.
Computer magazines are about computers and related subjects, such as networking and the Internet. Most computer magazines offer advice, some offer programming tutorials, reviews of the latest technologies, and advertisements.
"An Open Letter to Hobbyists" is a 1976 open letter written by Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, to early personal computer hobbyists, in which Gates expresses dismay at the rampant software piracy taking place in the hobbyist community, particularly with regard to his company's software.
Michael Abrash is an American programmer and technical writer. He is best known for his magazine articles and books on code optimization and graphics for IBM PC compatibles and for working at id Software in the mid-1990s on the rendering technology for Quake. Since 2014, he has been the chief scientist of Oculus VR, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms.
Digital Systems Inc., Seattle, USA, between 1966 and 1979 an accounting service and technology development company founded by John Q. Torode. The company was reorganized into the microcomputer design and development company Digital Microsystems, Inc. (DMS), Oakland, USA, founded in 1979. In 1984, it was sold to the new UK operation Digital Microsystems Ltd. (DML) and finally ended its US operations in 1986. Without Torode, Digital Microsystems Ltd.'s product HiNet was sold to Apricot Computers Plc in 1987. In 1986, Torode founded a new company, IC Designs, Inc., based partly on Theodore "Ted" H. Kehl's VLSI technology at the University of Washington (UW), which was bought by Cypress Semiconductor Corp. in 1993.
Michael Wiesenberg is a technical writer, author, and former poker player.
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Jim Warren was an American mathematics and computing educator, computer professional, entrepreneur, editor, publisher and continuing sometime activist.
People's Computer Company (PCC) was an organization, a newsletter and, later, a quasiperiodical called the Dragonsmoke. PCC was founded and produced by Dennis Allison, Bob Albrecht and George Firedrake in Menlo Park, California in the early 1970s.
A periodical literature is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also examples of periodicals. These publications cover a wide variety of topics, from academic, technical, trade, and general interest to leisure and entertainment.
TestComplete is a functional automated testing platform developed by SmartBear Software. TestComplete gives testers the ability to create automated tests for Microsoft Windows, Web, Android, and iOS applications. Tests can be recorded, scripted or manually created with keyword driven operations and used for automated playback and error logging.
DTACK Grounded was a computer hobbyist newsletter published from July 1981 to September 1985 by Hal W. Hardenberg. Subtitled "The Journal of Simple 68000 Systems", the newsletter was dedicated to the proposition that the Motorola 68000 CPU could be used to build simple, fast computers. In 1981 this was a revolutionary idea. This was before 68000-based personal computers like the Macintosh had been created. In 1981 Motorola was marketing the 68000 solely as a CPU for Unix workstations. Hal believed that the 68000 could be used as a simple embedded microprocessor as well, and used the newsletter to explain how to do that.
.EXE Magazine was a monthly computer software magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1986 to 2000.
The Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award was an annual prize given to individuals who, in the opinion of the editors of Dr. Dobb's Journal, "made significant contributions to the advancement of software development." The Excellence in Programming Award includes a $1,000 prize that was donated in the award winner's name to a charity of the winner's choice. The award was launched in 1995 in the print edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal and was given each year until 2009. In his March 1995 article introducing the awards, then editor-in-chief Jonathan Erickson wrote that the award was intended to recognize "achievement and excellence in the field of computer programming." Erickson explained that the winners were "selected by a special editorial committee" of the magazine. Because Dr. Dobb's serves an audience of software developers, the Excellence in Programming Award is specifically intended to recognize resources for programmers: languages, code libraries, tutorial books, and so on. Developers of shrinkwrap software intended for retail sale, custom software for corporate use, embedded software, or general-purpose applications were not considered for the award.
Dennis Allison is a lecturer at Stanford University, a position he has held since 1976.
Bob Albrecht is a key figure in the early history of microcomputers. He was one of the founders of the People's Computer Company and its associated newsletters which turned into Dr. Dobb's Journal. He also brought the first Altair 8800 to the Homebrew Computer Club and was one of the main supporters of the effort to make Tiny BASIC a standard on many early machines. Albrecht has authored a number of books on BASIC and other computer topics. He is mentioned as one of the "who's who" in Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BASIC interpreter to type in programs or to load programs from storage.
later changed to Dr. Dobb's Journal