Dr. Dobb's Journal
| First issue | January 1976 |
|---|---|
| Company | CMP Media |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | www.ddj.com |
| ISSN | 1044-789X |
Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) is a monthly journal published in the United States by CMP Media. It covers topics aimed at computer programmers. DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware.
History
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 several implementations of a stripped-down version of an interpreter, for the BASIC computer language. After the first xeroxes were mailed to those who had sent stamped addressed envelopes, the publisher (People's Computer Company or 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 … prior to publishing the first issue in January, 1976.
Jim Warren was DDJ's editor for only about a year and a half. Numerous other editors followed him, with their tenure random, but generally abbreviated by the publisher's necessarily small salaries. Some years later, PCC, the nonprofit corporation, sold DDJ to a commercial publisher.
The title was later shortened to Dr. Dobb's Journal, then changed to Dr. Dobb's Software Tools as it became more popular. The magazine presently appears as Dr. Dobb's Journal with the byline "Software tools for the professional programmer", with the abbreviation DDJ also used for the corresponding website. It is currently published by multimedia company CMP Media.
The March 1985 issue "10(3)" printed Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto" a call for participation in the then-new free software movement.
Title
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. Bob Albrecht edited an eccentric newspaper about computer games programmed in BASIC, with the same name as the tiny PCC nonprofit educational corporation that he had founded, People's Computer Company. Dennis Allison was a longtime computer consultant on the San Francisco Peninsula and sometime instructor at Stanford.
In the first three quarterly issues of PCC newspaper published in 1975, Bob had published articles written by Dennis, describing how to design and implement a BASIC interpreter, but with limited features to be easier to implement. He called it Tiny BASIC. At the end of the final part, Dennis 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 SASE. Dennis said, Let us stand on each others' shoulders; not each others' toes.
It was at a time when memory was very expensive, so compact coding was important. Microcomputer hobbyists needed to avoid using too many bytes of memory -- avoiding overbyte. The area of dentistry focused on controlling overbite problems is called orthodontia.
The newsletter's content was originally pure enthusiast material. Initial interest circled around the Tiny BASIC interpreter, but Warren immediately 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 contributions, Steve Wozniak counting among one of the more well known early contributors. Other contributors included Jef Raskin, later credited as a leader in the Macintosh development, and Gary Kildall, who had created the first disk operating system for microcomputers, named CP/M (control program/monitor), of which Seattle Microcomputing later implemented a knock-off to avoid paying Kildall royalties, that knock-off ultimately becoming the basis for Microsoft's first entry into the operating system market.
Today the magazine receives contributions from developers all over the world working in application development and embedded systems across most programming languages and platforms. The magazine's focus is now all professional. Among the more popular columnists are Michael Swaine. Verity Stob (the pseudonym of an English programmer) used to write a widely-read column.
Computer program source code published during the early years include:
- Tiny BASIC interpreter
- Palo Alto Tiny BASIC by Li-Chen Wang (copyleft, all wrongs reserved)
- Small-C compiler by Ron Cain
Sources
- Swaine, Michael (January 2006). "Dr. Dobb's Journal @ 30". Dr. Dobb's Journal, p. 18.
- John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said (ISBN 0-670-03382-0).