Dr. Dobb's Developer Library DVD 6
archive.org101 points by kristianp 5 days ago
101 points by kristianp 5 days ago
Thank you, that's quite the trip down the memory lane! I devoured Dr. Dobb's when I was a teenager!
I ended up on Michael Swaine's Medium site [1], and then ordered his book: "Fire in the Valley" (2014) [2].
Some interesting stuff you will get out of Dr. Dobbs articles, as someone that was an avid reader.
- The Small C compiler set of articles, where you will get the sense not even K&R C was used outside UNIX for quite some time, only a common subset.
- The toolbox articles creating a Turbo Vision like framework in Object Pascal
- The evolution of Python and related adoption
- Strange programing languages like Actor, C@+ (try to search this one nowadays), Sather, BETA
- The fashionable compiler benchmarks that used to be quite common back in the day
- The evolution of C and C++ at ISO, while their standards were being started
- A more heterogenous way of software development, when it wasn't only UNIX clones and Windows.
I think it was C+@ (pronounced CAT, as I recall).
Edit: pasting a comment of mine from here in 2019 [1]:
The language is C+@ [2]. I dug up an article about it in Dr. Dobbs Journal, the October 1993 issue. This does not seem to be the article I am remembering, since it does not go into the instruction interleaving technique anywhere near as much as I remember, but they do mention it and say it was called "beading":
The binaries produced by the C+@ compiler are independent of the underlying machine architecture. Without recompiling, applications can be moved from SPARC to 68000 to Intel x86, and so on. C+@ is not interpretive--the binaries are encoded using a sophisticated 'beading' technique developed at Bell Labs. Because of the streamlined language design, the C+@ compiler produces these portable binaries with extraordinary speed, without the need for preprocessing or front ends.
This is from the article's introduction:
The C+@ programming language, an object-oriented language derived from AT&T Bell Lab's Calico programming language, was developed to provide programmers with a true object-based language and development environment. C+@ (pronounced "cat") has the syntax of C and the power of Smalltalk. Unlike C++, C+@ includes a mature class library with more than 350 classes used throughout the system. The C+@ compiler itself is written in C+@, and all of the source for the class libraries is included with development systems. The Calico project was started at AT&T Bell Labs in the early '80s, after the introduction of Smalltalk and at the same time as C++. Calico was originally used for rapid prototyping of telecommunication services; hence, its heavy emphasis on keeping the language syntax simple and showcasing the power of the graphical development environment.*
I asked the AI. It’s first reference was this comment. They were really doing a lot in the 80s at Bell Labs.
Catplus?
Edit: Yandex can search for it! But doesn't seem to find anything relevant.
(It also hates such queries and will force you to wait 2 minutes for a captcha to load.. but you get the results after a long wait! As our forefathers once did!)
I did find C@ and C@++ though.
A lot of very accessible algorithm articles too. I still remember the article on ternary trees.
Actor was fascinating -- basically Smalltalk made to look "more familiar" with a C-like syntax. It was created by odd-language designer Charles Duff (who had earlier created Neon, an object-oriented Forth).
'"C@+" programming language' query in Kagi returns a single hit from Esolang [0].
> C@+ (try to search this one nowadays)
I think not even Wikipedia knows about this (at least with a quick search)
Don't forget to donate to archive.org while at it.
The amount of useful material they have gathered is impressive.
Money is great, and they're also looking for volunteers all the time to help out with Open Library. The website is constantly under attack from DDoS, and we're always improving, but it's a long road. I'm just a volunteer, but a very active one.
Money is great, and they're also looking for volunteers all the time to help out with Open Library.
I made a good-faith effort at searching the site for anything requesting volunteer work, and came up empty. Got a pointer? What are they looking for?
Jeeze, what’s the motivation to DDoS a service like this?
I will speculate the DDOS attacks are funded by companies and governments that benefit from not being held accountable for their past deeds. I suspect X, Google, China, PRNK, Hungary, etc
Could it just be insanely intense nonstop crawling? I've seen it on some other sites.
And if you're a tech billionaire, please fund offshore backups of archive.org !
Working on it, only two more commas to go :)
I wonder if r/datahorde folks can be of any help here.
I believe you mean r/datahoarder: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/
r/datahorde is different, and a ghost town.
A quite memorable article [1] described a “backwards” message-passing technique in C++ using operator overloading so you could do stuff like:
obj<-method arg1 arg2;
I skimmed the article and haven't gotten out the compiler or source files, but does anyone understand how arg1 and arg2 with space and no operator in between are syntactically valid C++, and what do they do?
I guess something like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1642028/what-is-the-oper...
I bought every issue I could find of this ....always so much inspiration!
3, 5 and 6 are up. My copies of 1~4 were stolen. :(
https://archive.org/search?query=Dr.+Dobb%27s+Developer+Libr...
And the journals:
https://archive.org/details/texts?tab=collection&query=Dr.+D...
Interesting - would have thought they all would be uploaded by now. I feel like I bought the set years ago when Dr Dobbs folded but I can't seem to dig them up. However I did find my Verity Stob archive CD :) (which looks like it might already be on the archive - I can't be sure as mine is still sealed in the shipping packaged, never opened it)
A better link for Dr. Dobb's collection: https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal
I miss dr dobb
dobbs and msdn were my reading while I was waiting on a 2 hour compile many times. then msdn went terrible, and dobbs out of business :(
I also liked Borland's Turbo Technix - https://archive.org/details/texts?tab=collection&query=turbo...
Is there any magazines like this left? When I was a kid, I used to buy these. I didn't even have a computer, I was just enjoying imagining what I could do if I had one. Didn't understand 10% or the content though.
Closest would be the ACCU Overload journal, freely available here [0].
There'a also Visual studio Magazine but it's obviously Microsoft-centric [1].
Also CODE magazine [2] but it's more lightweight, feels more "commercial".
[0] https://accu.org/journals/nonmembers/overload_issue_members/
I'd recommend Paged Out https://pagedout.institute/
And PoCoGTFO https://alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/
These are free modern magazines that capture the feeling of joy of programming that Dobbs and BYTE used to have
I really like Paged Out. It’s got quite a nice amalgam of topics, as well as the SciFi art illustrations.