Not for those trying to stay ahead of the curve

Solid practices fill this journal, but don't go looking for the cutting edge here. This magazine follows a theme every month, August 2004 is Testing and Debugging, not just a hodgepodge of articles slapped together with relevant advertising. In a given issue, the articles range in expertise from simple concepts of HTTP interactions to advanced techniques in runtime monitoring. It does seem to focus on two languages nowadays; C++ and Java.

It is a good supplement to you subscriptions. Every month I tend to find only two or three articles out of the dozen or so they print to be interesting.

The journal falls short in staying timely, a couple articles every month on emerging technology or practices would really improve this journal.

No longer the Dr. Dobbs you knew in '92

Any review placing this shell of a former mag in a five-star category doesn't remember how good it used to be, doesn't have anything to compare it against, or hasn't read it lately.

I'll be blunt: this isn't Dr. Dobbs. This is an imitation of Dr. Dobbs, now with less content than ever before.

I started a subscription recently after letting mine lapse a few years ago, and my first thought was how thin this magazine had gotten. Ads galore, the venerable PC-Lint product is still throwing code at readers with aspirations of deification, but a decided *lack* of relevant content.

Then I thought about it, and here's the problem: Dr. Dobbs wants to cover practical computer science each month, but it's gotten too big (too specialized, too complex, too broad) to cover well in a single magazine weighing less than ten pounds per month.

Add to this the absolute panoply, the metaphoric world of resources now available today just with some decent Google skills, and Dr. Dobbs is suddenly less relevant, less *necessary* than it once was.

You can still get algorithmic optimization lessons in an issue or two. Once in awhile, you'll get something worth that issue's cover price. More often than not, you'll read about things you don't use, or don't understand, because in reality, nobody can keep up with every trend in CS. The ACM and IEEE have about 150 specialized magazines just to make the attempt, so how can Dr. Dobbs even pretend to be a full spectrum resource?

No, Dr. Dobbs had a primary mission once that could make it great again: talk about the code. Code, code, and more code, and the less esoteric, the better. There are 50 million COBOL programmers in the world, and five XSLT-SOAP-webMethods package writers. What's more relevant, even today?

How to stay current with trends in software development

Dr. Dobb's Journal is one of those must-have periodicals on your software development bookshelf. Sure, there are other magazines and journals that are better at covering specific areas, but Dr. Dobbs will keep you updated on the entire world of software development.

Each issue has a general theme, such as graphics, programming languages or algorithms. Articles span a wide variety of development languages and are generally easy to read, even if you aren't familiar with the subject.