Did hobby programming magazines inspire your career, and what's their modern-day equivalent?

Question

If you learned programming in the 80's (or late 70's/early 90's), you may have been influenced by one of the many hobby programming magazines that existed at the time - RUN Magazine for the C64/C128, Byte, Compute!, Ahoy!, and many others. Articles in these magazines may have sparked your imagination about graphics, games, and logic, and may have been a potent force in defining your interests and career.

What is the modern-day equivalent of magazines like these? How do kids today get inspired and learn about computing?

I'd like to hear your answers to these questions:

1. Did 80's-era magazines inspire you to get into programming?

2. Do you see a need for some type of modern-day equivalent to inspire kids or young adults today?

Answer 1

Enter Magazine FTW!

Not sure many people will remember that one, but I actually had every issue. The hours I would spend typing up code samples (or translating from a Commodore to an Apple, because they didn't support the ][e...)

Good times. :-)

Answer 2

Byte was probably my favorite. As for needing modern-day equivalents, I think there are thousands of resources available on the Internet. I don't see how a normal printed magazine could compete. Sites like CodeProject, MSDN and hundreds of others provide far more tutorials and samples then I ever had as a kid. Add to that sites like StackOverflow where you can ask questions instead of writing a letter and waiting for next month's issues to see if it got answered and I think kids today have far more opportunity to get into programming.

Answer 3

Yup, New Atari User (Page 6 Publishing) for 8-bit atari programming.

Although I see a need for something equivalent, I'm stumped what it would be. My nephew last year asked for assistance getting started with programming, and apart from buying him a Lego NXT kit, I'm lost:

Computers don't come with an easy, out of the box programming language, in which the kid can achieve parity with some of the games they play, in a few pages of listings

Answer 4

80-Microcomputing. Later shortened to 80-Micro. They had an article that had the source, in Basic, for a complete database system generator. I actually typed the whole thing in without knowing squat about databases. Reading through it made me realize just how much about computers I didn't know. Humility is what keeps us from turning into a Code Monkey.

Answer 5

I would guess the best modern version of these might be "Make" not quite the same thing, but still very cool and able to inspire young (and old) minds