Four years ago this month, Mike Swaine wrote his first editorial for Dr. Dobb's Journal and in it he talked about change-changes at the magazine, changes in the microcomputer industry, changes in general. As it turns out, change is the topic of this month's editorial too. You may have in fact already noticed one change. Mike has a new role with the magazine, having moved from the position of editor-in-chief to that of editor-at-large. This gives him a better opportunity to do more original writing, something he's wanted to do for a long time.
For me, Mike's change means a new opportunity. I am Jon Erickson, a former senior editor at BYTE and now editor-in-chief of this magazine. DDJ has long been one of the microcomputer magazines I've most admired and the chance to lead it into the coming years was a challenge I didn't have to think twice about accepting.
Mike's move doesn't mean that DDJ is going to become a radically different magazine from what it has been. I'm as committed to DDJ's original spirit as Mike, and any changes that do take place will be dictated by technological advances and other significant trends that are important to you.
Just coincidentally, the changes at DDJ's parallels some interesting shifts in the microcomputer industry itself. Advances in small system hardware architecture are making life miserable for manufacturers of expensive minicomputers and the emergence (finally) of more sophisticated operating systems like OS/2 promises powerful new applications. Over the coming months, DDJ will be paying particular attention to how those changes affect the software development process.
This changing of the guard, so to speak, provides you with the opportunity to have a say in what directions DDJ will go in the future. Take a few minutes to drop me a letter about what you think DDJ should be doing and where it should be going. What are we doing right or wrong? what could we be doing better? what aren't we covering that we should be? If you have a specific article in mind that you'd like to write, let me know about it too.
One change I wouldn't mind seeing in the microcomputer industry is a shift away from the tendency of companies to pour resources into litigation instead of R&D. First it was the Lotus look-and-feel suit and more recently Apple's copyright infringement suit against Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.
There's little any of us can do when influential companies decide to fight it out in the courts instead of on store shelves. But in the meantime, a lot of small (and large) software developers are caught in the middle, wondering whether or not they should sink more resources into further development of Windows applications. In truth, there's probably some merit to the suggestion that part of Apple's strategy is to delay and stifle the development of graphical user interface Windows-based applications. If so, then third-party developers should resent being manipulated like pawns on a corporate chessboard. Maybe by the time this editorial appears, the dispute will be resolved but I don't think so. In the meantime, it looks like it will be the lawyers who profit at the expense of independent developers and end users.