Title: Featured Publication Roundup

I have to admit to considerable surprise at the total lack of contributions from readers about other programming periodicals they read. I know many of you do read other periodicals, indeed some of you actually write for them as well. I cannot believe that you subscribe to magazines that you think are worthless (but if you ever did, I hope you would take time to warn your fellow members).

I regularly receive review copies of a wide range of periodicals aimed at varying levels of expertise. (I am sure there are others that I have not heard of - for example what do specialists in embedded systems read? - which is why your input would be more than welcome).

If you would like to try a publication for six months or a year in exchange for writing up your experiences for this column you have only to ask (email or telephone for preference). Let me briefly highlight a few publications.

The C/C++ Users Journal

The Windows Developers Journal

Dr Dobbs Journal.

The last of these is probably the one that you are most familiar with as it has been around for many years and aims at being a newsstand periodical. As such it has a broad target and is largely written by professional journalists. Some issues are of more interest than others. If you live in Europe and have difficulty with seeing an issue, Parkway Gordon will be happy to arrange a trial subscription for you.

By contrast CUJ also has a long but very different history. It started out as the newsletter of the US based C Users Group. It then became a commercial publication published by R & D Publications. The latter was bought up by Miller Freeman a couple of years ago. Its regular writers are professionals in software development who write as a sideline. That distinction is important because it means that they are writing from personal experience. If that experience slips they lose their main source of income. They are practitioners first and foremost and writing is an added extra. That most of them are very good writers is an added bonus. I think CUJ is excellent value for money (if I had to pay for my subscriptions, it would be the one I bought). Parkway Gordon will also be happy to provide you a trial subscription to CUJ.

WDJ is (as its title suggests) are more specialised publication. If MFC, ActiveX components etc are more important to you than the exact syntax and semantics of some C or C++ expression you should check this one out. I am not aware of any UK distributor so you will have to go Stateside. Their website is www.wdj.com and subscription information can be obtained from <wdsub@mfi.com>.

C++ Report

Journal of Object-Oriented Programming

Component Strategies

There are several other SIGS publications but these are the ones that I am most familiar with (largely because they send me regular complimentary copies of these). C++ Report started as a newsletter aimed at the growing number of C++ enthusiasts at the end of the 80's. It was then being written by people at the cutting edge of C++ development (read that both ways, using C++ and developing C++). After a couple of years it graduated to being a regular magazine but retained its cutting edge nature. More recently it seems to be having a mid-life identity crisis. At one extreme it wants to provide material for the average C++ programmer (ones that might find most of Overload beyond them) whilst at the other end it wants to continue to be out at the cutting edge. The growth of Pattern Technology and the Java Explosion has resulted in C++ Report broadening its coverage. From my personal perspective this has been a loss. It has retained some excellent regular contributors such as Jim Coplien which will keep sales going for some time but I think it needs a radical review of what it is doing. As an example, the regular puzzle column sets such obscure C++ code that I would be surprised if more than a tiny percentage of readers even look at it. The answers for such puzzles should be instructive, I doubt if many find them so.

I still rate C++ Report highly and it would be second on my list of paid for periodicals.

JOOP, as it is universally known, covers a broad range of OO with regular columns from C++, Eiffel and Smalltalk specialists. Its focus is more at analysis and high-level design (which, now I come to think about it, means that this is where the material on Patterns would better fit, rather than where it is, in C++ Report). One reason that I would miss my regular copy of JOOP is Andy Koenig's regular column. If anything this column serves to emphasise the nebulosity of the editorial policy. His column would happily fit in C++ Report and the level of C++ required to appreciate many of his columns exceeds that of most OO generalists. If you have a broad interest in OO or if you work in an environment where many OO languages are in use, JOOP would be worth a subscription.

Component Strategies used to be called Object Magazine. I am not sure exactly why SIGS decided to rename it though I suspect that it has something to do with the growing divide between 'Object' and 'Component'. I could write quite a bit on that, but not now and probably not in C Vu.

Object Magazine was more aimed at the technical management levels of software development and I think that Component Strategies probably retains this. This must be a hard market because we know just how few technical managers are actually interested in keeping an up to date overview of the technology. If knowledge of CORBA, System architectures, application level objects etc. feature large in your work then Component Strategies is worth checking out.

If SIGS is interested in defining the target readership of the above magazines more precisely I would be interested (and, within reason, would publish.) I would also be interested in knowing what kind of readers they actually have. I say this because there is more than a little confusion in my mind between C++ Report and JOOP. For subscription details: email <enquiries@sigs.com> or telephone +44 (0)1306 631 331

Software Practice and Experience

This is one of the Publisher's substantial range of academic (peer reviewed) journals. Unfortunately the peer review process makes it very expensive (enough so that even University Libraries have to think twice about the cost these days). This is a pity because over the course of the 12 monthly issues (+ 2 specials) there are papers that would certainly interest many ACCU members. In the current issue we have four papers and a book review. The papers are:

EDDIE Beats the Bookies. Evolutionary Dynamic Data Investment Evaluator is a forecasting tool based on genetic programming.

Linguistic Reflection in Java: For those that do not know, Linguistic Reflection is a technical term referring to programs that can generate and add program fragments to themselves at run time. That is a self extending executable.

The Star Fault Manager for Distributed Operating Environments, Implementation and Performance

Implementing a Zooming User Interface: Experience Building Pad++

The second and fourth of these papers are most likely to interest C Vu readers. I can do little to help you find out more about the Linguistic Reflection paper (you could try your University Library if you have access to one.)

If you want to know more about Pad++ (written in C++) try exploring http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad++. Among other things you will find binaries for several unix systems and for Windows NT/95 as well as the source code. If you try it, remember to share your experiences.

If you would like to try a sample copy of Software Practice and Experience have a look at http://journals.wiley.com/wilcat-bin/