
Farewell, Dr. Dobb's - andrewbinstock
http://www.drdobbs.com/240169421
======
drallison
I was a founder, with Bob Albrecht, of the People's Computer Company and was
the creator of Dr. Dobb's Journal. It is very sad to learn of the "sunset" of
DDJ. I take some solace that DDJ survived longer than most of the other
serious personal computing journals and continues to be relevant today. I am
proud of the impact DDJ and PCC have had on our society. I am grateful for the
contributions of the many DDJ authors and editors. Jim Warren, the first DDJ
editor deserves special recognition, as does Bob Albrecht whose vision and
insight guided PCC.

Dennis Allison

~~~
diminish
It's possible to keep Dr. Dobbs alive by factory resetting back to the startup
mode. Announce here some share in DDJ to an additional tech cofounder with
some ideas to pivot the Dr. Dobbs. Apply to YC.

Here's my offer: I'll return DDJ into a blogger community focused on newer
tech (Ruby/JS/Python/Rust/Go/Closure/Scala) with the same writing pleasure to
"medium" or "svbtle". A lot of 20years old would love to write under the brand
of DDJ. I ask 20% share only and as a cofounder have Andrew.

Anyone has better ideas?

~~~
Intermernet
The brand (DDJ) should have no bearing on such a site's popularity past it's
initial launch. Indeed, to associate oneself with such a brand is to guarantee
a level of quality of journalism that, if not met, diminishes the DDJ brand,
as well as the startup. You'd best be willing to live up to this standard
before trying to co-opt the DDJ brand.

I'd say that, in all honesty, you shouldn't need the DDJ brand to achieve what
you're suggesting. Just start a "blogger community focused on newer tech
(Ruby/JS/Python/Rust/Go/Closure/Scala) with the same writing pleasure to
"medium" or "svbtle"" and see how it goes.

Don't try to ride on the bootstraps of a decades old brand that can thankfully
still retire unblemished. A rarity in these times.

~~~
nikiiv
It'll be extremely difficult without the popularity of the brand that will
attract the readers

------
andrewbinstock
I'm the editor of Dr. Dobb's. I'm happy to answer any questions.

~~~
beagle3
Thanks for that.

A few years ago, that would be 20 or so, a friend loaned me a CD with all the
magazine text from inception until that time. Is there any chance for a final
"all of ddj" DVD?

~~~
joe_bleau
I'd order one.

~~~
jefurii
Me too.

------
lispython
The only future for journalism might be reader revenue. Without it, everyone
in this field were in danger of becoming a public relations or advertising
company disguised as journalism.

I'm an editor at Programmer Magazine in China
([http://special.csdn.net/programmercovers/](http://special.csdn.net/programmercovers/)),
as a coincidence, after 14 years operation, we just release the last print
issue last week and withdrawal towards the electronic version only. I think we
share the similar experience and feeling about how the tech medias evolved
recently.

But media is still a very active field, if you have read the New York Times
innovation report that leaked earlier this year, you may get a mixed feeling
that with the risks, there are still opportunities to build an independent
site with in-depth articles, code, algorithms, and reliable product reviews,
which quality media should have.

But unfortunately, most decisions were not made by the ones who love this
career, have ability and skill to lead the change, and do not fear to face the
risks.

~~~
frik
We need more serious competition in the Ad market, someone that interrupts the
status quo like Uber did for taxi business [and Google Ads _previously_ did].
Let website owners host the Ads on their web server (no 3rd party scripts;
would help also with noscript/adblock).

Today Google Ads and Amazon Referral with the new greatly reduced payments are
the new problem. IMO pay per click (PPC) is a big problem (1. click fraud, 2.
most people don't click anyway but seeing it still influence by seeing it, 3.
adblock/noscript blocks 3rd-party scripts) and it got popular as Google
introduced it in AdWords in 2002. Til 2002, cost per thousand impression (CPI)
and cost per mille (CPM) where most used. CPI/CPM are the better model for
website owners and company that run Ad-campaigns; PPC for Google an other ad
networks.

Paywalls are not the answer, the WWW is successful because it is open.

Learn from the history: Microsoft's MSN started as serious competitor to WWW,
and it was a fiasco in 1995. (I mean the original _The Microsoft Network_ that
came with Win95: [http://winsupersite.com/windows-live/msn-inside-
story](http://winsupersite.com/windows-live/msn-inside-story) (incl. photos)).
Bill Gates even completely rewrote his "The Road Ahead" book half a year later
- I have both editions, and almost every page has different wordings (MS
Network, Information Highway -> Internet/WWW)

~~~
stingraycharles
You do realize there is already heavy, impression-based competition going on
in the ad market (google "real time bidding", for example)? That is exactly
the kind of disruption you are asking for. AdSense is usually only used to
fill remnant inventory; any big publisher uses a hybrid of real time bidding,
direct sales and ad networks nowadays.

Running your own ad server is a big, big liability. While running a news
website is mostly a read-operation, adservers are extremely write-heavy (every
adview results in at least 2 write operations). Do that 10 time for every page
view, and have 100 pageviews a second during peak times, and you suddenly find
yourself becoming and engineering company instead of a publishing company.

Anyway, the scenario you are describing to "disrupt" to ad market is exactly
the scenario we had in the 90s. Everyone was using phpAds, which could be
embedded directly from within php, and advertisers ran almost exclusively CPM
based campaigns. What happened? Publishers found out that their adserver was
eating >95% of their server resources because frankly, adserving is HARD, and
advertisers found that their ROI was crap because people didnt click ads.

The real disruption is already happening, in the background, far away from
where the public looks -- real time bidding has completely disrupted the
adserving market in the last two years, and more and more ad networks find
themselves becoming irrelevant.

Disclaimer: i was co-founder and cto of an adserving platform.

~~~
frik
RTB may be an answer, I am not sure it is _the_ answer. It introduces some
latency to the visitors, is very data heavy process and is realistically more
a supplement than a disruption. (some fellows are a bit skeptical:
[http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/rtb-overhyped-
technolog...](http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/rtb-overhyped-
technology/241723/) )

If it's a race to the bottom like Uber than that's not good for website
owners. And RTB automates just one side, the buyer side could/should be
automated too.

All hassles aside, the best advertisement method for visitors and website
owners would still be the _old fashioned_ way of hosting the ads on the
webserver itself and doing CPI/CPM ( _best_ as in not sitting in a glass
house, and no need for Adblock/Noscript as last resort). Google used MySQL for
Google Ads until ~2012, it should be fast enough for 95% of the websites. RTM
is write heavy, old style CPM isn't by today's hardware standards.

The disruption could be to get more ad-buyers on this bandwagon (again). Only
the website owner (theoretically) and (as good example) Amazon.com can provide
good matching advertisement. I have yet to come across a Google Ad or one of
the other ads that displays content that interests me at all.

~~~
stingraycharles
> best advertisement method for visitors and website owners

The problem is, they are not the customer -- the advertiser is the customer.
The measurability of internet advertising is also its fallacy: while in
traditional media outlets, advertisers just keep buying and buying "because
our managers will fire us if we do not get the advertising slots before black
friday", on the internet, advertisers discover that their ROI of black friday
ads is very low and adjust their willingness to pay premium prices for them
accordingly.

You forget the constraints that advertisers have been putting onto CPM based
campaigns also: for example, frequency capping is a common targeting mechanism
since the 90s: only show my ad 3 times to the same visitor within a 30 minute
timespan. It involves a lot of cookie processing, session logging (think about
race conditions when multiple ads are requested in the same pageviews, etc).

If you have 20 campaigns running with a decent frequency cap, you can get a
LOT higher average CPM than otherwise (because advertisers get a certain
guarantee of the amount of exposures / visitor).

Anyway, I'm all for disruption, and I've been the technical lead of an
adserving platform for almost 10 years -- and I'm glad I had an exit and can
leave the market behind me. It's complex, margins are extremely low, and you
are only able to disrupt if you cater to the advertisers, not to the
publishers/visitors. The things that are currently disrupting the market are
only in the best interest of the advertiser, because hey, that's where the
money is coming from. One of the more scary startups I encountered in the last
months I was active was a startup that linked location data to visitor cookies
-- buying "bogus" facebook ads to link a cooke to a location, and using that
information as feedback for _offline_ advertising (for example, how many
people are able to see our billboard daily? how many people were in the
football stadium when we ran our ads?). All kinds of red flags privacy-wise,
but that's where the market is moving. Google is moving towards abusing their
cookie (they have one big "super"-cookie both for advertising and gmail and
search -- you cannot opt out of targeted advertising without opting out of
gmail) and linking mobile location data with the cookie on your desktop.

Disruption on the publisher/visitor side is nice in theory, but I am very
afraid it does not work in practice.

------
nostrademons
I remember when I was a 10-year-old kid and had just got my first computer,
someone told me that if I really wanted to learn to program, I should get a
subscription to Dr. Dobb's and read all the articles. So my dad dutifully got
me a subscription and I read all the articles. A lot of it was over my head -
there was a lot of C and assembly, a lot of optimized graphics or numerics
algorithms - but still, it was one of the few sources of programming tips back
then. There was no WWW, so you learned by buying reference books, magazines,
playing around with the computer and seeing what happens, or getting the
official reference documentation from the manufacturer.

I think that what killed Dr. Dobbs is ultimately that the Internet sparked a
huge availability of quality programming info online, which drove the price of
this info through the floor. I've spent my morning Googling obscure corner-
cases for Django form validation; there are dozens of pages freely available
in the official docs, StackOverflow, GitHub, blogs, etc. It's hard to compete
with free.

~~~
discreteevent
I couldn't afford it every month but some of the ones I did get I read again
and again. I remember Abrashes articles and thinking that I had so far to
climb. I still do but the thing is I don't think I've ever come across content
like it since. Another one I remember was an article by Douglas Hofstadter
about metaphors. It wasn't just tech but a way of thinking about everything.
And Swaine's flames for dessert!

------
fpp
Andrew,

this is sad news. Dr. Dobb's was always a beacon in the computer and software
publication landscape, one I grew up with and I've cherished till today.

I still remember the moments of pride and the feeling of recognition when
we've seen the first positive reviews of our work in Dr Dobb's many years ago
- something that could only be achieved by the high standing and excellent
editorial work of the magazine's team and efforts.

While it might be understandable from a financial or commercial point of view
that it's better to stop now than later, hopefully there will be an agreement
found with one of the big data center providers (IBM, MS, Google, AWS)to keep
the current site online and the archives open for the many who certainly will
find inspiration and guidance in much of what had been written in Dr Dobb's
during almost 40 years.

~~~
andrewbinstock
It's guaranteed to be up for a year at least, and probably much longer after
that. If a major host or ibiblio wanted to guarantee its availability by
hosting it permanently, I expect UBM (the parent company) would be amenable.
Not right now, but perhaps at the one-year mark.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Presumably, if the content will no longer be changing, one push it out to a
set of static pages and host it on a single instance in EC2, if it is clearing
several hundred thousand a year in its current ad clicks that would pay a
system administrator and general "minder"'s salary.

I find it particularly poignant because I recently scanned in my copies of the
early compendium volumes "running lite without overbyte" which I had bought at
the West Coast Computer Faire so long ago. Unwilling to keep the large format
books around, they live on as searchable PDFs on my iPad.

------
vram22
DDJ and CUJ (C User's Journal) were two very good magazines that I used to
read a lot. BYTE (more so in its earlier years) was another one on the same
lines. Can't forget some of the regular contributors to BYTE, for example (and
I don't mean just Jerry Pournelle, though his column was entertaining too).
Heck, I used to read Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar column out of interest,
even though I was not into electronics. So well done, the articles, the
photos, etc. I still remember, in one of the first BYTE issues that I read, a
very good introduction to Huffman coding by Jonathan Amsterdam. And so many
other such good articles, in all three of those magazines ...

~~~
rbanffy
I loved Creative Computing. I'm _very_ happy the issues are in archive.org.

~~~
vram22
I think there are some BYTE issues in there too.

~~~
rbanffy
Yes. Incredibly fun to read.

------
rcarmo
They can pry my stack of paper magazines from my cold, dead hands.

Seriously now, I read Abrash's stuff on Dr Dobb's, and it was that magazine
(above all others) that instilled in me the idea that coding was above and
beyond the drudgery we waded through in college - that it was an art form that
emerged from systematic thought process and a deep understanding of how bend
technology to your will.

I just hope they don't dilute the brand -- I can see someone having the bright
idea of setting up a Programming 101 kind of site under that name a couple of
years down the road, and really hope someone, somewhere, somewhen, will pick
up the torch and make sure it stays associated with "true masters" (if there
is such a thing).

~~~
andrewbinstock
Ugh! God no. You've just depressed me even more!

~~~
rcarmo
Apologies, I've definitely spent too long in big corporates :(

(like many folk, I sometimes feel Scott Adams is drawing Dilbert while
watching a live feed from our office)

------
bdamm
When I was still a boy, I would run down to the local pharmacy nearly weekly
and eagerly check the magazine rack for new copies of Dr. Dobb's Journal. It
was the main pipe through which I learned about the beautiful and intricate
world of programming.

I tossed all those magazines in a fit of purging when I was leaving home and
heading to college. There may be a handful still in some storage box.

Thanks, Dr. Dobb's.

------
dalke
I was a loving subscriber in the 1990s, and looked forward to each new
edition. I even succeeded in having an article of mine in the 25 year
anniversary edition (at [http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/making-c-extensions-more-
pythonic...](http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/making-c-extensions-more-
pythonic/184404439) ).

It was at the same time first visited Sweden, where I now live, and I remember
the thrill of seeing Dr. Dobb's, with my article, on the newsstand in this
foreign land.

Now I read blogs and HN links to some of the things I once got from Dr.
Dobb's, that newsstand no longer exists, and neither is Dr. Dobb's.

Life is change. Thanks, Dr. Dobb's!

------
dpweb
10m views, $1m rev. $100/cpm seems like they're overachieving when based
purely on views. Nothing to be done there.

It's a shame I've read Dr. Dobbs for I don't know how long. They should sell
to someone, keep it alive.

~~~
jobposter1234
Agreed, a $100 RPM is insane! That means a few years ago, they pushed a $300
RPM.

For that kind of revenue, it sure seems like there's a viable business
there...

What am I missing?

~~~
mc808
Indeed, it appears that the root problem is not that web advertising is in
decline (which it isn't), but that there aren't enough M's in that very
respectable RPM estimate. Probably due to the site being a cluttered,
unfocused mess with errors galore. (Not just dated but often literally broken.
[http://www.drdobbs.com/database/image-compression-via-
compil...](http://www.drdobbs.com/database/image-compression-via-
compilation/184408024) )

I say that in the spirit of tough love, as Dr. Dobbs has always been a brand I
trust to deliver quality content - when I can find it and it's legible.

~~~
petercooper
So I decided to read some stuff on there today and after a couple of articles
I got sent to a forced "login or register" page as my 2 article limit was up.
No wonder the Ms are limited!

------
300bps
Programming has changed substantially from when I first started. It used to be
I'd have to wait for a ride to the local mall or book store from my parents,
and then quickly wade through the programming books looking for one or two to
purchase and thereby expand my knowledge.

I remember when I bought The Waite Group's Turbo-C Bible that came out in
1988. I practically had the thing memorized.

Today, my IDE does a tremendous job of guessing what I'm trying to do. Google
does great work at telling me what's causing error messages that occur while
I'm debugging. It can also give me example code of almost exactly what I'm
trying to do in the exact language I'm trying to do it in (and probably a
dozen other languages to boot).

We seem to have gone from an era requiring pre-knowledge programming to an era
allowing just-in-time-knowledge programming. Dr. Dobbs was a great part of the
old era and I'm sad to see it go.

------
billyhoffman
What I found most interesting from this post was revenue. Here is a respected
brand, with reasonable amounts of traffic, and multiple employees (Andrew
mentioned himself and a sales team), that is doing < $1M in revenue. Even 4
years ago, they were doing ~$3M in revenue.

This is the reality of most businesses. Yes, most people know they won't be a
Facebook or a Instagram, but those insanely high numbers have skewed what
"success" means in a lot of people's minds. 99.999% of businesses don't making
tens of millions of dollars with a handful of 20-somethings.

Success in business is surviving for a non-trivial amount of time

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/201407/jason-fried/the-
challenge...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/201407/jason-fried/the-challenge-in-
business-is-staying-in-business.html)

~~~
dalke
That's silly. 38 years is longer than the 25 year threshold for "long haul"
used by that essay.

Success also means knowing when to stop, but even then "sunset" in this
context doesn't mean to stop. Doug Kaye did an excellent closing-up-shop
podcast for the end of IT Conversations describing why he chose to "sunset"
the site, rather than work to keep the site going or shut it down completely.

For that matter, I've closed my consulting business in the US when I moved
away. That company was a success, even though it no longer survives.

~~~
billyhoffman
I think you misunderstood. I believe Dr Dobbs has been very successful.

My point is that "success" for a company does not mean billions of dollars or
hundreds of millions of dollars. Success can mean hundreds of thousands or
even less. Success can mean a business that supports its employees for years
and years and years. Dr Dobbs is a good example of a success without all that
craziness.

Unfortunately, HN and the tech scene as a whole focuses a ton of attention on
these massive massive valuations and exits. This distorts what "success" means
and places it on an near impossibly high pillar.

~~~
dalke
You are right; I misunderstood you. My ex-company should instead be seen as
one of many examples of a successful, short-term (<10 year) companies that
have since ceased to operate.

------
ratbr
I am clueless about the right etiquette, but can anyone share some high
quality publications in the similar vein? Mainly interested in "head content"
that is not a book, but a set of relevant, contemporary articles around our
trade.

~~~
kragen
I find a lot of stuff along these lines on
[http://news.ycombinator.com](http://news.ycombinator.com) and
[http://lobste.rs;](http://lobste.rs;) there's also /r/programming and
/r/coding. I post (links to) a lot of stuff at
[https://twitter.com/kragen](https://twitter.com/kragen).

I used to read LWN regularly, but now I only read it when someone links to it.

Beyond link aggregator sites like these, there are dozens of individual people
whose writings I read frequently, if not every time I come across anything new
they've written, because it's reliably high quality: Landon Dyer, James Hague,
Yosef Kreinin, Raganwald, Tim Bray (ongoing), Dave Long, Bill Gosper, Darius
Bacon, Fabian Giesen (ryg), viznut, John Carmack, Bret Victor, of course Paul
Graham, Bunnie Huang, Seth Schoen, Avery Pennarun (apenwarr), Herb Sutter,
Stepanov, Alexandrescu, Oona Raisanen (windytan), Jon Blow, Linus Åkesson, Ian
Lance Taylor, Oleg Kiselyov (although this is very difficult!), Ian Piumarta,
Mark-Jason Dominus, Aaron Swartz (RIP), and Randall Munroe.

On the hardware side, Anandtech is pretty good.

Above and beyond that, for overviews of objective things with links to further
reading, I've found Wikipedia to be pretty consistently good.

------
robert_tweed
This makes me sad. First we lost Byte. Now we've lost Dr Dobbs. The last of
the great hacker institutions is gone. Supplanted by the amorphous blob of
sketchy information that is the Internet.

Change is inevitable, but it isn't always good.

------
jonquark
I've never read Dr. Dobbs regularly, but often when struggling with thorny
issues I've come across helpful articles (in particular a series by Herb
Sutter a few years back really helped).

This is sad news - I should have supported it better when it existed - I'll
miss it when it is gone!

------
hnriot
Over the years I've enjoyed Dr Dobbs, but like most magazines they have become
less and less relevant with google+stackoverflow+wikipedia. Over the years Dr
Dobbs has added things to my repertoire of software knowledge, but I have to
say Wikipedia has done more in recent years.

I can't think of a single magazine I've seen in recent years.

I still miss BYTE

------
CurtMonash
I know of two main ways to monetize the writing of good tech articles --
conferences and consulting. Consulting happens to be much more enjoyable for
me than conferences, so that's the option I chose.

By way of contrast, I started DBMS2 in 2005, and at no point did I come close
to thinking of a viable-seeming advertising-based business model.

------
brooklynjam
Confused. Web server cost pennies. Writers, heck lots would do it for the
press. Publishing a magazine? There are tens of thousands of millennials just
in SF alone that have net worth in the millions, and would love to be
involved. Did you cast the net?

~~~
MicroBerto
I'm on the side of 'confused' as well. With that much traffic, it shouldn't be
hard to run a business with great revenues or massive passive profits.

But having visited this site for the first time, it looks like an old relic
that's about 4 "generations" out of date. I am not enticed to click on
anything.

They also clearly missed the boat on social media (10.3 million visitors and
you have 3500 Facebook likes and 6000 Twitter followers?!), who knows what
else was missed.

Does a site like this _really_ need a large sales staff? As programmers, can't
you program a better self-serve system and moderate it?

Content doesn't need to be _that_ expensive. There are ways.

IMHO, this is the kind of site that a group of experienced web marketers could
seriously turn around, keeping just a few excellent and aggressive young
writers and editors on board.

But nah, giving up is easier. _shakes head_

~~~
dagw
_this is the kind of site that a group of experienced web marketers could
seriously turn around, keeping just a few excellent and aggressive young
writers and editors on board._

You mean like The New Republic did? Sure they could probably have cut costs,
changed their focus, become more mainstream (perhaps focused more on articles
in list form) and remained profitable, but the end result wouldn't have been
DDJ, but something else and just a shadow of its former self. Sometimes its
best just quit while you still have a good thing going, rather than
relentlessly running your brand into the ground, desperately chasing just one
more dollar.

------
andsmi2
Somewhere late in high school my father started bringing home copies of Dr.
Dobb's and I think around 11th grade -- (1993?) I was given my own
subscription. I was lucky if I could understand 10% of what was written, but I
would devour it -- and it provided a definite different perspective to me than
the pop magazines I had been reading Compute! and many years before, Run! -- I
have fond memories of the publication....I just have no longer had time to
read it...sorry to see it go. Thanks for all the great content.

------
kfcm
Someone has to say it, so it might as well be me:

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of professional
developer voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I
fear something terrible has happened."

I've read Dr. Dobb's for 30+ years, and it helped me move from a coder to
programmer/developer to software engineer--while still retaining the hacker
spirit. Each month, Dr. Dobb's, Sys Admin, et al were on my bookstore shopping
list, to be read and re-read over the next month.

It will be missed.

------
DrTung
"Running Light Without Overbyte" still remember that title, when reading
Dr.Dobb's while waiting for my turn fiddling with a new KIM-1 computer at my
friend's house in 1976. A while back... I was a subscriber for many years.

Also I remember Al Stevens writing his columns from his RV, the incident with
the exploding tire. Did you know he came up with C# as a language name before
Microsoft did?

In those days before the internet DDJ was a welcome sight in the mailbox,
every issue had something worth reading.

See you around Dr.Dobb's!

~~~
ScottBurson
Ah, the _full_ title, as I recall, was "Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer
Calisthenics and Orthodontia: Running Light Without Overbyte".

~~~
mitosis
When I was an undergrad, I found very early issues of Dr. Dobb's in the
medical library of my university, the name of the magazine having fooled the
librarians. I remember spending many happy afternoons there reading about 6502
single-board computers and porting Tiny C to various machines.

------
unwiredben
In the 90's, Dr. Dobb's was a front-to-back read for me every month; it
exposed me to so many programming ideas while I was still in high school and
college, and it's sad to see it go. I think I kept my paper subscription going
until that came to an end. It joins other publications like PC Techniques,
Game Developer, and Byte that have a cherished place in my archives from a by-
gone past.

------
cpks
This seems almost a perfect way to end. I grew up with Dr. Dobbs. It's hard
for me to overstate the impact it had on me growing up. It maintained a high
standard of quality and integrity.

When I was a little kid, Dr. Dobbs was the only place to turn to for high-
quality, in-depth, long-form content on programming. I was limited to the
topics it covered. Today, I can search for thousands of blog posts on whatever
interests me. I can read LKML. I can read LWN.

What was once a niche is now mainstream. If Dr. Dobbs stuck around, it was
going to go the way of Radio Shack. That would have been sad. As is, it was a
good reign, and a big and positive impact on the world. Now that relevance is
gone. The ongoing impact is tiny. It's a good time to move on.

------
a_e_k
Darn. It's safe to say that I wouldn't be where I am today without DDJ's
influence while growing up. I'll always have fond memories of turning to
Michael Abrash's column first thing on getting a new issue. DDJ will certainly
be missed.

------
kabdib
Fond memories of Dr. Dobbs, back when I was a kid in high school. I still have
some issues from Vol 1, but not the first one because my local computer store
hadn't started carrying it.

I learned about FORTH from DDJ. And how to write a tiny BASIC interpreter. I
wrote my own version of PILOT from hints given me by a DDJ article. How to
write a simple assembler, how to do simple computer music. Oh, countless
things.

But I haven't read them in decades. DDJ was like the Mad Magazine of the 70s
computer scene; random, but always entertaining, and sometimes educational.

I won't miss them, but I have good memories of them.

------
upside
While I'm sorry to hear of a business shutting down, I can't help feel a sense
of joy that the advertising business model is beginning to lose ground. Im
sure the Internet and the world benefitted from such a model, but at this
point, I believe, the Internet and humanity will benefit from ditching all the
useless junk that really just gets in the way and annoys people.

I'm probably not alone in this, but when I see an ad on a page, I register a
note in my memory model to never buy anything from that given company as
payback for polluting my experience.

------
fegu
After the tinkering stage of software development, this magazine gave me
articles about real algorithms. It filled the gap perfectly. Then I went on to
university with a real head start.

~~~
voltagex_
Any idea where I could find those old issues?

DD staff: I'll buy a torrent/download of your archives!

------
nonuby
Perhaps if they put some of that $3m in the glory days to expanding the focus
and community around the site it wouldnt be this way, new users new revenue
streams.... Kind of like slashdot (sold for a big mac) and soon infoq (e.g.
more conferences puylishing to youtube now)

It will be news to Google and Bing (and their share price) that "advertising
on websites" doesn't work. I suspect they were still working a CPM advertising
model that died around the start of the century.

------
zipwitch
Reading this I realized something - I no longer trust online advertising. At
all. Some years ago, I recall shopping for plane tickets and cheerfully
clicking on the advertised results on Google.

Now I actively avoid it. I've regularly seen what appear to be malicious ads
on Gooogle itself. (Search for "SoftwareX" first advertised result is
"SoftwareXDownloadFree.com" Yeah, legit. Sure.) As a matter of self-
protection, I won't click on online ads.

------
Who828
I am seriously going to miss Dr. Dobb's Jolt awards, it helped me find so many
interesting books overtime (Release it!, Specification by example, Taming
text, Team geek, Masterminds of Programming etc to name a few, here is the
complete list if anyone else is interested
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolt_Awards](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolt_Awards))

Can't believe there won't be any jolt awards next year :(

------
protomyth
Dr. Dobb's along with Byte, Creative Computing, and Antic were the information
sources that got me into computing. I miss all the disappearing sources of my
youth. I guess PragPub is an interesting descendant (
[https://pragprog.com/magazines](https://pragprog.com/magazines) ).

[edit: new web address for PragPub
[http://theprosegarden.com](http://theprosegarden.com) ]

------
lucozade
One edition of DDJ is the sole reason for my career and vocation.

Thank you

~~~
smoyer
Sounds like an interesting story ... care to elaborate?

------
kentbrew
Oh, no. So sorry to see this happening. I remember when Dr. Dobb's was a tiny
little pamphlet, printed on paper so thin that it only had one side.

------
tonetheman
So sad. I remember many days pouring over articles and code in Dr Dobbs.

Is the the DVD6 (
[https://store.drdobbs.com/product/13/Dr.-Dobb%27s-Developer-...](https://store.drdobbs.com/product/13/Dr.-Dobb%27s-Developer-
Library-DVD-Release-6) ) the final/everything release of the older content?
Just wondering if there will be a final one or is that it?

------
jestinjoy1
This is very sad. Last time I had the same feeling reading closing down news
from [http://www.h-online.com/open/](http://www.h-online.com/open/). Very sad
that these people are finding it difficult to stay alive even though they
provide top class content. Why couldn't they stay alive if Facebook can Google
can live on ad revenue.

------
q2
I read several articles on Dr. Dobb's. I can get various high quality details
on various technologies with independent perspective. Several articles are
bookmarked for future reference. Is it possible to preserve archives forever
for future consumption?

I do not know about financials but I still feel there is place for high
quality software industry related journal.

------
_pmf_
It's one of the few publications that has some embedded system content instead
of exclusively web monkey shit.

~~~
smoyer
Embedded Systems Design and Embedded Systems Programming were my favorites,
closely followed by Dr. Dobbs and Radio Electronics.

------
josh_fyi
Thank you for publishing my first-ever article in the software field back --
back when publishing on dead trees had more cachet than the web!

[http://www.drdobbs.com/collaborative-applications-and-the-
ja...](http://www.drdobbs.com/collaborative-applications-and-the-
java/184403999)

------
AdventureJason
Andrew, this is a remarkable (and well-deserved) outpouring of appreciation,
love and fond memories of Dobb's. Thank you for the hard work and unabashed
personality that you (and Deirdre, and Adrian, and so many others) have put
into the publication, and given to the community, over the years.

------
raymondh
Dr. Dobb's, you will missed.

Much of my career was built on knowledge gleaned from the magazine and
website. Even now, I'm working through articles on CUDA programming with the
same joy that many years ago I spent with the articles on Forth.

So long. Your influence will be felt for decades.

Raymond

------
jefflinwood
Just wanted to say that like many of the developers here, I grew up reading
Dr. Dobb's Journal back before we had the the World Wide Web, and one of my
proudest moments as a software developer was getting an article published in
the magazine!

------
yitchelle
Man, that is very sad to read, and that Dr.Dobbs was not able to transform
itself. Good luck on your future ventures.

Would love to read a post mortem on the time leading up to decision to shut
down? I bet there will be plenty of lesson learned in there.

------
crystaln
Why not pass the small operation off to someone who has the chance of keeping
it alive?

------
peter303
Byte is a another generalist+software magazine that was pretty good and didnt
survive. Most of the magazines still being printed are dovted to a single
platform. And they cover application usage rather than development.

------
foobarge
I've had the privilege to write an article for the Dr Dobb's journal (print
edition) Hard to describe how proud I was of that (of course, I received a ton
of help from awesome the coworkers I had at the time.)

------
foolinaround
Would Dr. Dobb's have survived with Google contributor? ( rhetorical
question).

Looking at this thread, there would have been a whole bunch of folks who would
have paid a few dollars to keep the mag up and running.

~~~
dalke
Assuming there's need for $500K in membership revenue per year implies an
awful lot of people chipping in a few dollars each. I don't think that will
work out.

------
jimnutt
I'll be sad to see Dr. Dobbs go, as it's been there almost my entire career.
Unfortunately, though, magazines (and their web versions) have become less and
less relevant through the year.

------
buckbova
> Given that I've never bought a single item by clicking on an ad on a
> website, this conclusion seems correct in the small.

Neither have I. Who's clicking these links?!

------
tdicola
Wow what a bummer--it will definitely be missed. I fondly remember reading
great articles about graphics programming and C++ development back in the
90's.

------
barking
I've hardly ever read anything at dr dobbs. Google searches rarely took me
there. Just now when i visited I was locked out after viewing to pages.

------
istvan__
Isn't this happening partially because the social media platforms are more
effective and most of the potential advertisers just use those?

------
Chirael
Top notch articles year after year - nice work, and very sorry to see Dr.
Dobb's go.

~~~
andrewbinstock
Thank you!

------
sarciszewski
<em> in a Title tag :(

------
filmgirlcw
End of an era. Sad to see this go. So many great memories from this mag.

------
jonstewart
Thank you, Dr. Dobb's. Requiescat in pace.

------
megablast
Goodbye Mode X!

------
Cppete
Arghhh! Despair is what I feel now.

------
mp99e99
wow very sad. Very long running periodical.

------
Duckpaddle2
Sad...

------
curiously

        "This is because in the last 18 months, there has been a 
        marked shift in how vendors value website advertising. 
        They've come to realize that website ads tend to be less 
        effective than they once were. Given that I've never 
        bought a single item by clicking on an ad on a website, 
        this conclusion seems correct in the small."
    

This is an interesting trend. I for one, have stopped advertising on adwords
completely, and now looking for ways to do content marketing or cold calling.
I remember paying $2 for a click and thinking wow, not a single purchase after
100 clicks later just an obscure request for more information.

We now also have adblock proliferating so most people don't even see the ads,
I myself, a huge user of this extension, in particular the adblock plus which
goes even further.

Hopefully, the adwords have gotten cheaper per click, but I doubt it for some
niches.

What would happen when websites can't support themselves any longer through
banner ads? I think if a business that relies on ad revenues and they have no
plan B then they are in trouble. This would also mean bad news for large
social media companies that rely solely on sale of ads. Google has already
well diversified their operations but such is not the case for twitter or
facebook (whiche people use to chat with each other now, as more people would
choose to unfollow a typical social media whore).

------
vegabook
Disrupted to death, by sites like Hacker News. Ironic then the outpouring of
sympathy on this comments page. I loved Dr Dobbs but must spend at least 10x
more time on HN or SO than there, ironically again, sites which are light or
zero on advertising, and make their money obliquely (HN by pumping Y
Combinator's VC business cred, SO through focused ads targeting developer
recruitment). I guess the lesson is that interaction is where it's at. Static
content is dead.

~~~
andrewbinstock
Not so sure. I personally love HN (I normally use a different moniker). In
many ways, our recent success is in part due to HN and Proggit, which would
drive readers to some of our articles. And, of course, it also gave us no
shortage of feedback on the articles themselves ;-)

------
sv3nss0n
R.I.P.

------
shtolcers
Oh my... I just read 'Farewell, Dr. Boobs'. Need morning coffee urgently :)

------
stblack
RIP indeed.

However if you peruse the site now, observe that Dr Dobb's uses the annoying
practice of segmenting articles into multiple pageviews. Excessively so.

In a sense, and on balance, they deserve to go.

