According to a posting on the InformationWeek website:

“Led by Dr. Dobb’s Editor-in-Chief Jon Erickson, Dr. Dobb’s Report focuses on the tools, technologies, people, products and services transforming the software development marketplace.  Anchored by new in-depth Analytic Reports the Dobbs editorial team will produce in 2009, Dr. Dobb’s Report highlights the most business-critical perspective and strategies to help the readers of InformationWeek Magazine define and frame software development objectives.”

As discussed in ZTrek, Dr. Dobb’s parent company TechWeb has often used InformationWeek as a dumping ground for its dead magazines.  For example, in 2007 the company shut down its Network Computing and Optimize publications, and folded some of their content and branding into InformationWeek.

I was a huge Dr. Dobbs fan a decade ago when the magazine was focused on C++ Windows development.  But as I migrated to .NET, the single .NET section in the magazine was not enough for me to justify its expense.

The problem with Dr. Dobbs is it tried to be all things to all programmers.  But as technology continues to get grow more complex, programmers often find they must specialize to be truly effective and advance in their careers.  So naturally .NET programmers will gravitate toward .NET magazines and websites, etc.  And so a generalist magazine like Dr. Dobbs will have little use in our daily work lives.

As Eric.Weblog stated, perhaps the saddest thing about Dr. Dobbs passing is going out with a huge grammatical error on the front cover of its final issue (see above).  Yes, Dr. Dobbs, its (sic) time for you to go.

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