Since we don’t really have magazines anymore, whats your all-time favorite computer magazine?
Mine is Compute!'s Gazette for the Commodore 64. Tons of reviews, cool ads for software and the type-in BASIC programs were awesome. Stuff like coding KTerm in BASIC from the listing in Dec/89 issue was magical. Kids today miss out…
Getting Started
KTerm is written entirely in BASIC.
Enter the program using "The Automatic
Proofreader," found elsewhere in this issue.
Be sure to save a copy to disk when you've
finished typing.
In the 80s there was a magazine in the UK called Input. It taught you to programme the various home computers of the time like the Spectrum, Commodore, Acorn, Dragon…
They would literally print hundreds of lines of code into the computer to see it run, sometimes you had to wait for multiple issues as they published some in parts month by month so you’d have to wait ages to program them in.
It gave me my love of programming and computers quite early.
I have a funny story about either InfoWorld or Datamation magazine:
When I was in high school, I would take the school district’s copies from the trash and look through them. They had postcards you could tear out and mail back where you check boxes for the advertisers you’re interested in. They all seemed fascinating to me, so I checked every box (more than 100), and then wrote my own name, title Head Programmer, put my home address, and mailed it. I didn’t understand the postcard had a code for the district’s address on it.
The school district started getting all sorts of mailings addressed to me as Head Programmer. I was called into the vice-principal’s office with two data processing people there also, and a bunch of big envelopes were put in front of me and they asked me how this had happened. I had to fess up. I’m sure they got these mailings for years after.
OT, but those “reader service” cards were the lifeblood of many small companies.
I worked part-time in high-school for a small industrial manufacturer. Whenever they had a small press release on a new product printed in several of their industry trade magazines, they got a slew of those responses a few months later.
My job was to stuff envelopes with data sheets and mail them out in response.
ICYMI - When a reader circled a number on those cards, the selected manufacturer would receive a set of gummed address labels in batches with the contact info of the people that expressed interest in receiving more information.
Basically, the printed/analog version of a “Contact Us” button on a website - but with a very long turnaround time of weeks and months.
I was being cute here, not actually casting shade on any other pub. I’m an editor at Fierce Network and those other brands are all places where I have worked.
No, I am not a job-hopper. The trade press was doing layoffs before layoffs were cool.
Commodore 64 users had a nice selection of magazines. My other faves were Ahoy, Commodore Micro Computers, Info, and Run. Some became Amiga Magazines later and were joined by Amiga World which was the defacto mag in the states. I think the UK had AmigaFormat.
I read a lot of weekly’s like PC Week, Computerworld, and Infoworld in the '90s. And later Macworld because Apple gave you a free 3 month (or later 12 month) subscription when you registered a new Mac.
And I was buying new Macs for my company at least once a year.
(I’ll see myself out!)
