End of the line for Code Quarterly

Man, what a bummer. I was so looking forward to that magazine.

I submitted an article, but failure to receive a response in a timely manner caused me to edit (probably poorly) myself, and just publish it on my blog [I did actually get a positive response after I had already published it, nearly 2 months later].

Peter certainly wasn't working on this full time, so it's completely understandable that there'd be delays, but it's too easy to just publish an article you've written on a blog and get instant gratification. And for that reason, the model that Hacker Monthly uses, seems much, much, much more viable.

I feel particularly knotty about this news because I pitched Peter a magazine idea back in February '10. Pasting in the initial email for reference here, and to close the loop:

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Subject: Maybe a magazine.

Hi Peter.

I read your comment about starting another book after "Coders at Work", and thought I should pitch you an idea...

Instead of a book, consider creating a magazine. An intelligent forum for essays and articles discussing the nitty-gritty of the software topics covered by "Coders at Work" would be an invaluable resource. It's a hole that's being filled poorly by discussions on blogs, Hacker News, freenode, and Google Groups. You're in somewhat of a unique position, with the connections to solicit contributions from the leading lights, so to speak.

Here's a hypothetical table of contents, just for kicks:

    * Brendan Eich on ECMAScript5.
    * A critical reading of The TeXbook.
    * Build your own homoiconic mini-language.
    * A brief history of exceptions.
    * Thomas Ptacek on safely storing passwords.
    * Fun with Octrees.
    * Visualizing strange attractors.
    * How to implement significant whitespace.
    ... and so on.

Naturally, the magazine wouldn't have to be print-only, or even print-first. I'd imagine that every article would exist first on the web, with groups of them getting packaged up into issues every month or two, and made available for purchase using MagCloud or LuLu. With programmers as your target audience, I think it could do quite well.

I think you're one of the few people out there with incredible writing chops, and a deep understanding of code, so... it's just a thought.

Cheers, -- Jeremy Ashkenas

I believe that's 400 people who told Peter that they would be possibly interested in contributing something back when he first floated the idea. I was one of those 400, but when the time came I didn't have a subject lined up that I felt was suitable for the format. I think that's why starting something like this is much harder than sustaining it. In the next year I might come up with two or three things suitable for the journal and put them aside until I have time to develop them into an article, but coming up with something to fit a deadline is much more difficult. Coming up with a topic for an inaugural issue that will presumably set the tone for the publication is even more daunting.

Very sad news indeed. As a contributor to Code Quarterly (the only one it seems) I was willing to put in the work to make it a success. It truly seemed like a publication that I would like to read. And that's the thing isn't it? We complain that there is nothing for "us programmers", but it seems that if we want it we need to create it. Otherwise we'll just need to settle for the dreck found in the grocer's aisle. You can never have too many articles on building the ultimate game machine.