Put on your dust masks, folks, we're doing a little bit of remodeling here at CUJ. We're changing some of the columns around, and things could seem a bit shaky for a while. Not to worry. The building is not about to collapse. The good news is, we're not losing any columnists; but we're giving a couple of them a chance to write about something different.
Bobby Schmidt is retiring "The Learning C/C++urve" and taking over the Q&A spot from Pete Becker. We've renamed the column "Uncaught Exceptions" to reflect a broader purpose than the answering of technical questions. The column is meant to "handle" things — questions, opinions, gripes — that haven't been adequately handled elsewhere. So Bobby may occasionally engage readers in discussions on the burning issues of the day. (Programming issues, that is. We'll not waste precious ink on the Clinton/Lewinsky/Starr insanity or the national budget.)
Pete Becker is starting a brand new column called "The Journeyman's Shop." Pete thought up this name himself, and I like it for several reasons. To me it implies that programming is a craft, and perhaps one which none of us will completely master. That may sound a little depressing, but I don't think it has to be. It is the nature of craft to provide endless opportunities for improvement. Pete's column title suggests another good thing to me as well. Maybe, just maybe, there are aspects of this craft that can be passed on from one generation to the next. If an old Fortran programmer can scare a fresh C++ whiz into commenting code, the world will be a better place.
The changes we're making to CUJ really aren't that drastic. In a way, we're just blessing what Bobby and Pete had already started doing. Bobby has always been an interactive kind of guy. He's one of the last few programmers I know who actually likes talking on the phone. Bobby brought his gift of gab to "The Learning C/C++urve," and it bubbled with interesting visitors and discussions. (The price: it did tend to veer off into hyperspace from time to time.) The Q&A format should fit him like a glove. And Pete, it seems, had been pushing the envelope of his Q&A column for some time. He often provided a lot more A than Q, in an effort to share his hard-won wisdom from the trenches. Now Pete will have the space he needs to develop his ideas. I'm sure he'll have a lot of useful things to say about the programming craft in general, and something he calls "low-level design" in particular.
Switching two columns around isn't a trivial thing, but there may be a change or two more in store for CUJ in the months ahead. Rest assured it's all for the best, and nothing that will require a hardhat. I trust nobody's been kept awake by all the commotion.
Marc Briand
Editor-in-Chief