Whether you're ready or not, the end of this year (or the beginning of the next, depending on how you look at it) is right around the corner. 1990 and we're on a downhill run into the twenty-first century, and writing the correct year on your checks will be the least of your problems. We'll have to worry not only about the right decade, but, before long, the right century, too. Somehow that still sounds a little unreal. For DDJ, the new decade will bring the beginning of our fifteenth year, spanning three decades. That's not bad for any magazine, let alone one that deals with computers.
For our part, we're lining up next year/next decade articles and, once again, we need your help to make sure we're getting out the right kind of articles for you. When we published the 1989 editorial calendar, we heard from a lot of you who sent in suggestions and/or wrote articles (thanks from us and from your fellow readers), and we'd like to hear what's on your mind this year.
So in the first part of 1990, our monthly themes will be:
Later in the year, we'll cover topics such as graphics programming, our annual C issue, structured languages, operating systems, and object-oriented programming. I'll post more specifics at a later date.
As always, we're looking for focused, task-specific articles that solve a particular programming problem, present a new or unique technique or utility, and list your program code. If a subject that interests you isn't mentioned above, that's okay, the list isn't meant to be all-inclusive. Only about half the articles in any issue are theme related; the others are on all kinds of programming-related topics. Any language -- C, Basic, Pascal, Modula-2, C++, Fortran, Forth, Smalltalk, assembly, and so on -- is fine, as is any operating system platform, including Unix, DOS, OS/2, Macintosh, or whatever. (One really popular article we ran not long ago was on the Amiga and I can already hear "I told you so...." echoing from Amiga fans.)
So, if you have an idea for an article that you'd like to write or to see someone else write, give Mike or me a call or drop us a letter (E-mail or regular) describing what you have in mind. (For CompuServe, address to 76704,50, MCI Mail care of DDJ, BIX to jerickson, or if you're using the DDJ listing service, jerickson.) For regular mail, be sure to send it to DDJ, 501 Galveston Dr., Redwood City, CA 94063. We quite often get letters addressed to us in care of our subscription service in Boulder, Colo. The letters eventually get here, but sometimes weeks later.
In other news, AT&T has finally released its 2.0 specification for C++. It's been a long time coming and everyone, particularly compiler vendors who've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, can now get down to the business of forging ahead with their C++ plans. (See the "Of Interest" column in this issue for details.)
While it's great that the specification is finally available, it was the 2.0 "language system" (don't call it "preprocessor") license arrangements that caught my eye. To license C++ 1.02, all you had to do was pony up $2000, not necessarily a big deal either for little developers or the big guys. That's not the story with 2.0, however. If you currently hold a 1.02 license, a 2.0 license will cost you $10,000, and if you don't hold a 1.02, but want a 2.0 license, the cost is $20,000. (Okay, okay, I know AT&T has to cover all those development costs and I wouldn't expect the company just to give it away.)
If you fall into the former category (that is, you want the 2.0 but don't have 1.02), here's a tip: Get a license to 1.02 for $2000, then immediately upgrade to 2.0 for $10,000, saving yourself $8000 in the process. I checked with an AT&T rep who said they would do this, but for how long, she didn't know. If you take advantage of this money-saving tip, don't forget about who put you onto it. You might want to consider sharing your savings; 10 percent is a nice round figure, made payable to the editors of DDJ, of course.
Copyright © 1989, Dr. Dobb's JournalJanuary Real-time Programming
February Windowing Systems
March Assembly Language Programming
April Neural Nets
May Memory Management
June Hypertext