A Few Good Magazines From the 70s and 80s

[−] defrost 43d ago

Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia was my goto, I boot strapped my first C compiler from Ron Cain's Small-C code.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-C

* https://github.com/trcwm/smallc_v1

[−] SpaceNoodled 43d ago

I remember feeling like a professional my first time reading an issue Dr. Dobb's I got at an airport on the '90s.

[−] scorpionfeet 43d ago

My first article was published in Dr Dobb’s in 1992!

[−] DonHopkins 43d ago

DDJ and Creative Computing were by far my favorite computer magazines that I looked forward to every month.

The DDJ editor Ray Valdez was kind enough to (without me even asking) grant me keep the copyright to the article about pie menus that I wrote for the Dec 1991 UI issue.

The Design and Implementation of Pie Menus: They’re Fast, Easy, and Self-Revealing.

Originally published in Dr. Dobb’s Journal, Dec. 1991, cover story, user interface issue.

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-design-and-implementation-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5616247

[−] helsinkiandrew 43d ago

The death of Byte magazine cover artist Robert Tinney, was discussed here just a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987425

[−] canucker2016 43d ago

Kilobaud Computing had died out.

Byte and Dr Drobbs had the odd technical article but gone mostly mainstream by the 80s.

But one of my classmates showed me an issue of Hardcore Computist (renamed Computist) and I was hooked.

Technical knowledge about circumventing copy-protected software interspersed with cracks for various software programs.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computist

back issues on archive.org at https://archive.org/search?query=Hardcore+Computist

[−] TuringNYC 43d ago

I thought of OMNI before anything and was pleased to find it on the article :-)

[−] OhMeadhbh 43d ago

Yeah. It was randomly happening upon OMNI on the Internet Archive that inspired the article. What a delightful magazine!

[−] greenbit 43d ago

All those HR Giger artworks, yes, Omni had style

[−] gedy 43d ago

That was a favorite of mine hands down. Anyone have suggestions on where to access all/most issues?

[−] anonymousiam 43d ago

DDJ was my favorite of those mentioned. Byte was #2. The rest were a pass for me. After DDJ called it quits, they released a CDR containing an archive of all issues, which I still have. Much of the content was timeless.

[−] gramie 42d ago

There was a Toronto Commodore magazine called The Transactor that was my absolute favourite. It covered everything from the CBM 4032 and 8032 through the various Amigas. The magazine was very much programmer oriented, from assembly to BASIC and C.

It also published the Commodore Inner Space Anthology, containing full memory maps, ASCII tables, BASIC reference, and much, much more.

https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-gallery/the-transactor-ma...

Earlier on, when I was first using our VIC-20 and C64, I learned a great deal from Compute and Compute's Gazette.

[−] 8bitsrule 42d ago

I was surprised to -not- see The_Transactor, which was full of details on how to get your C64 to boldly go where no BASIC type-ins had gone before.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120519135652/http://www.bombja...

[−] StanislavPetrov 42d ago

Shout out to Phrack Magazine.

https://phrack.org/

A Few Good Magazines From the 70s and 80s (bi6.us)

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