Magazines?

Despite the emergence of blogging, I still like to pick up and read technology magazines now and again. This can be a bit of a challenge, as there are a lot of technology magazines, and many of them are free, advertiser supported.

Not only do you get what you pay for (some of the freebie mags are pretty bad), but it's worse - time you spent reading bad magazines could be spent on something more valuable. In other words, reading trade rags can have a real opportunity cost - you can, in effect, "lose" time and money on those freebies.

Which brings me to this: Which magazines do I read, why, and what is my technique for telling them apart?

My technique is pretty simple. I have two questions:

1) Would I actually fork over any real money to subscribe to this magazine?
2) How I know/respect the people who run these magazines?

That said, here are a few that pass the test:

A) Better Software Magazine(*)

I actually paid for this, back when it was Software Testing and Quality Engineering Lee Copeland is the editor-in-chief of BSW, and Google recently flew him out to do a tech talk on metrics and proving the value of testing - you can watch it here. In that talk, Lee openly admits that there is no truly accepted definition for testing, and describes several bogus metrics. The magazine attempts to appeal to a wide audience - testers, devs, managers - and it seems a little watered down. Still, I get quite a bit out of the editorials, and the writing is a notch or two above the typical trade rag. You can apply for a free subscription to BetterSoftware here.


B) Software Test&Performance Magazine (*)

I haven't met the principals at BZMedia, but I do enjoy ST&P. Rob Sabourin and Mike Kelly are two regular writers for ST&P, and Scott Barber had a long-running editorial series that was worth my time in and of itself. You can apply for a free subscription here. The editorial coverage seems to be moving toward developers, developer-tools, and Java/jUnit, but I still see something interesting in every issue.


C) Inc. Magazine

The magazine for small business. Even though it's not really a technology magazine, I find that I devour every issue of Inc. The magazine is inspiring, and the writing, my goodness, the writing is excellent. If only requirements docs and specifications were written this well - people would actually read them!

Seriously, good writing gets into you. Half of my strategy for improving your personal writing skill is to surround yourself with good writing. (The other half is to write. A Lot.) I pay about $10 per year for Inc., and have for the past three or four years. If you have ever considered going independent, or even starting your own micro-business, I would seriously recommend Inc. Plus, these guys walk the walk - Inc. is a magazine about small business that runs as an independent business unit of around 100 people. Inc. even has a trial subscription offer, if you are interested.

Nobody paid me anything for these suggestions. I just got a copy of Inc. yesterday and felt like sharing.

If you would like to know what trade rags I do *not* recommend, email me privately. :-)


Regards,

--heusser
(*) - Fair Warning: I work with this publisher, or have appeared previously in the magazine

Errata

I'm currently working on a reply to the testing challenge; I think you deserve more than my current, sloppy-english response.

In the mean time, a couple of very interesting updates:

1) Last week I read Brave New World. The link leads to the free, on-line edition of this 1920's classic. The novel is dis-topian fiction; it portrays a world that is highly socially engineered for happiness - and completely devoid of innovation, intellectual development, and meaning.

A couple of my favorite quotes:

The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies."
"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead."
- Huxley, Brave New World


"Yes; but what sort of science?" asked Mustapha Mond sarcastically. "You've had no scientific training, so you can't judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good–good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook. I'm the head cook now. But I was an inquisitive young scullion once. I started doing a bit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of real science, in fact." He was silent.
- Huxley, Brave New World

So, fifty years before I was born, you have Huxley worried about the cult of stable, predictable, repeatable. Interestingly enough, Huxley was a european who wrote the book on a trip to America, mostly in concern over what Henry Ford was doing up in Detroit ...

2) This week I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. I'm afraid that this one came after Mickey Mouse, so the copyright is enforcable. If you want to read it, you'll have to check it out of the library. It is a quick read; you can probably devour it in one sitting, and probably will. The book depicts how the choices we make define who we are - and who we will be. The book is inspired by Lewis's Christian Faith, but it is neither quite protestant nor quite Catholic. I think, most of all, Lewis wanted his audience to think.

Oddly enough, The Great Divorce was designed as a response to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In this book, Blake used the term "The Doors of Perception", which so inspired Huxley as he named a book after it. (And Huxley wrote the first book in this post. Odd ...)

In any event, these two books, "Brave New World" and "The Great Divorce" are going up on my list of books for intellectual development, right with up with Starship Troopers, Atlas Shrugged, The Chronicles of Narnia, Orphans of The Sky, Phule's Company, and Mere Christianity.

That was my quick, sloppy list, and it is a very odd list indeed. I should think on that ...

Regards,

--heusser