Dr Dobbs was pretty good until almost the end, no? If memory serves me well, I recall the magazine got thinner and more sparse towards the end, but still high signal-to-noise ratio. Quite the opposite of Ars T.
Huge debt of gratitude to DDJ. I remember taking the bus to the capital every month just to buy the magazine on the newsstand.
I would go to the library on my bicycle to scour for a new copy of DDJ as a 10 year old.
I had dreams of someday meeting “Dr. Dobbs.” Of course, that was back in the day when Microsoft mailed me a free Windows SDK with printed manuals when I sent them a letter asking them how to write Windows programs, complete with a note from somebody important (maybe Ballmer) wishing me luck programming for Windows. Wish I’d kept it.