It's Official: Software Development Magazine is No More

I had picked up a hint of this on the wind the other day, but it's now been confirmed thanks to this blog post by former Software Development Magazine editor (and founder) Larry O'Brien. As Larry explains, the magazine is closing and will be absorbed into Dr. Dobb's Journal.

I think this is a watershed event in the industry on par with, and part of the same phenomenon as, Borland's decision to sell off its IDE business and focus exclusively on high-end tools.

I won't pretend that I'm an expert at running an advertising-funded print magazine with a circulation in the tens of thousands, but it has always seemed to me that the challenge for SD Magazine was the paradox that the readers most interested in technical content are not necessarily the ones who have decision-making power regarding (or even interest in) expensive testing, configuration management, and "lifecycle management" tools. The advertisers who make these tools (along with the big platform vendors) are about the only ones who can afford to pay for full page glossy ads and conference sponsorships.

So the content slowly inches to more and more "light" stuff that's more palatable to a wider audience, little blurby articles in the mode of the trend started in the 90's by the men's magazine Details. Add to that articles about project management, hiring, etc. and the content overall is decidedly non-technical. I'm not meaning this as a criticism (I was a regular reader of this magazine for a decade, so I obviously liked it), but rather as an illustration of the paradox, the fine line the editors must have needed to walk to be technical enough to please developers, and non-technical enough to interest the people who can sign checks for big tool and training purchase orders.

I like Dr. Dobb's for its deep-down-in-the-weeds technical articles (lots of them, packed in tight, and with lots of text!), but I imagine going forward that Dr. Dobb's will now become more of a hybrid of the "general interest" and non-technical material that was the forte of SD Magazine and the low level technical articles that Dr. Dobb's is known for.

I think that might turn out to be a good thing for a reader like me who likes and wants both kinds of articles (and was happy to read two magazines to get them), but maybe not for the less technical reader that SD Magazine seemed so intent on targeting. My guess is that the marketing people at CMP think that the hybrid management/technical readership of a merged magazine--which now will need to be a super-magazine to please everybody--will somehow be a more effective vehicle for selling advertising than two separate magazines have been. They may be right.

I'm only surprised that they didn't do the reverse--absorb Dr. Dobb's Journal into the less esoterically named Software Development Magazine. Are CIOs who buy configuration management suites for Fortune 500 companies going to read a magazine called Dr. Dobb's Journal? (Please understand that I am only trying to get into the mind of the CMP business people behind this decision--no offense intended to the namesake or the people who work at this fine magazine.) Maybe there are other dynamics at work here that I am not seeing.

What I would love is for IEEE Software magazine to become available to non-IEEE Computer Society members. That would allow me to miss SD Magazine a whole lot less. I let my IEEE membership lapse awhile back because I was only keeping it up to read that magazine, which made for a very high subscription rate.

Farewell Scott Ambler, and Warren Keuffel, and Robert Martin, and Rick Wayne, and all the rest of the fine regular contributors (sorry if I missed anybody), whose writing I'll miss the most.

Dan

Update: here is the press release from CMP about the move. An excerpt:

The new title combines the best of Dr. Dobb's Journal and Software Development magazine into a single dominant brand, starting with the June 2006 print issue. It offers the most comprehensive examination of the most essential software development methodologies, ideas, management issues, tools, and technologies. The editorial content provides expert guidance on creating effective architectures, using innovative development techniques, solving integration problems in diverse computing environments, and managing the development lifecycle.