alt Hacker NewsA Few Good Magazines From the 70s and 80s
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Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia was my goto, I boot strapped my first C compiler from Ron Cain's Small-C code.
DDJ was my favorite of those mentioned. Byte was #2. The rest were a pass for me. After DDJ called it quits, they released a CDR containing an archive of all issues, which I still have. Much of the content was timeless.
Kilobaud Computing had died out.
Byte and Dr Drobbs had the odd technical article but gone mostly mainstream by the 80s.
But one of my classmates showed me an issue of Hardcore Computist (renamed Computist) and I was hooked.
Technical knowledge about circumventing copy-protected software interspersed with cracks for various software programs.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computist
back issues on archive.org at https://archive.org/search?query=Hardcore+Computist
I thought of OMNI before anything and was pleased to find it on the article :-)
The article states that "Playboy" magazine creators started "Omni", but I'm almost certain it was "Penthouse".
I would describe both Playboy and Penthouse as primarily pornography. As such, they were both wildly popular in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Omni was not that. I had a subscription to Omni from the first issue in 1978 until about 1983. Pop science, science fiction, fantasy art, interviews and features on space exploration policy... and junk science, UFOs, psychic powers, cults. News of the wierd.
Another magazine I think they should have mentioned: "Radio-Electronics".
The death of Byte magazine cover artist Robert Tinney, was discussed here just a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987425