Going Back to the Well
My partner, who is a photographer by trade, divides her professional life between taking photographs and selling her work. The selling end of her business consumes a lot of time. It involves matting and framing photographs, meeting with potential clients, and even hanging her own work at shows. I think she enjoys all these things, but when they take up too much of her time, she starts to lose her sparkle. That is when I tell her, “You need to go back to the well.” It is a metaphor for replenishment, for returning to your source, to the thing that got you excited in the first place. In her case, going back to the well means going out and taking more pictures.
Now it is time for me to go back to the well. For me, that means a return to engineering work. I have accepted employment with a company that designs automated test equipment for aircraft systems. I will be doing a mix of programming and hardware troubleshooting, and I am actually pretty thrilled. It looks like a lot of fun. Of course, I am not completely sure what the job will be like; I am absolutely sure I am minimizing how stressful it will be. After all, I will be partly responsible for the safety of aircraft — that is quite a sobering thought. But for a dozen reasons I won’t go into, that still seems less stressful than running a magazine.
Some readers may be feeling a bit jittery, what with the demise of C++ Report last year, and the more recent folding of Visual C++ Developers Journal. Maybe you’re wondering if I know something you don’t. Quite the opposite. I am leaving because you know something I don’t — what it is like to make a living as a programmer. As far as the future of CUJ is concerned, I think readers know about as much as I do. If CUJ’s fate is hitched to fate of C and C++ — and I think it is — we have many reasons to be optimistic. C and C++ are the top development languages today, and I don’t see anything replacing them in the near future. Not Java, not C#, C-flat, or any other newcomer to the C family. So from a developer’s standpoint, the need for good technical info on C and C++ is only bound to increase. Of course, publishing companies and their bean counters don’t always see things the way developers do. But CUJ is a profitable magazine; to my knowledge CMP Media has neither reason nor plans to cease publication.
Speaking of publishing companies, cleaning out my desk has been a fascinating exercise. This desk has lived through two acquisitions (Miller Freeman gobbles R&D Publications; CMP Media slurps Miller Freeman). I found a couple curious items: a cheat sheet for Emacs (the official “word processor” at R&D Publications); a Miller Freeman survival backpack, complete with hardhat and three days’ rations (I am not making this up); and a CMP memo filled with corporate blather about a “world beating” web company they never managed to get off the ground. Later in this issue, Bobby Schmidt ribs me for being stuck in the 70’s. I think it must be the 60’s, though, because I keep hearing that Dylan song in my head: “The Times, They Are a Changin’.”
Well, not much left to do but say my thank you’s. The standard disclaimer: if I thanked everyone who deserved it, we’d be here all day; I’ll try to keep it brief. First, thanks to Robert Ward for scratching the itch that turned into CUJ. Thanks to P.J. Plauger for trying to teach me to say “no.” (I never did learn.) Thanks to the CUJ staff here in Kansas, in Vermont, and in California. You are just the weirdest and wonderfulest people on earth to work with. Thanks to Bobby Schmidt and Dan Saks for their friendship and their sage advice. Thanks to Herb Sutter for bringing himself and his buddies over from C++ Report. Thanks to advertisers and readers for keeping this boat financially afloat. A special thanks to readers for writing articles, keeping us honest, and forgiving our occasional blunders (er, like Tip #5).
Finally, please do my successor a couple of favors, whomever he or she may be: keep reading this great magazine, and keep sending in those articles.
See you at the well.
Marc Briand
Editor-in-Chief