| Product: |
Application Development Advisor |
| Date: |
12/03/02 (28 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Good mix of articles, Free to developers, Very techincal
Disadvantages: Not for the hobbyist or home user
Most of the glossy computer magazines that litter the shelves of Smiths are aimed at the home or small business user. The professional end of the market is aimed at managers and technicians. What about the software developer?
A few years ago there was a magazine called Exe, which was aimed at the programmer, but that's folded. The programming sections of magazines like PCPro and PCPlus are really for the hobbyist.
Luckily there's at least one high-quality magazine aimed at people working in software development, and that's Application Development Advisor. What's more is that this high-quality magazine is available as a free subscription to developers (log on to the web site and fill in the online form).
So, what does AppDevAdvisor get you? Firstly there's a news section - though to be honest it's the least useful section of the magazine. There are lots of good techy web sites where you can get news.
Each issue contains some software reviews, mostly these are very comprehensive rather than two paragraph press releases. These detailed reviews are essential when the product is a programming suite or database development system. There are also book reviews, usually one a month, and again the reviews take up about a page. Everything's thorough.
Then there are the columnists, who are practitioners rather than full-time tech journalists. This is important, because it means that the problems they write about are real rather than theoretical.
Finally, there are the hands-on sections which cover tutorials, code examples etc. These are geared to Java, Visual Basic and C++. How useful you find these depends on what it is you're doing.
Additionally, there are usually supplements which look at specific technologies: security, web services, XML etc.
At this point I ought to point out that I'm an occassional contributer to the magazine. But then I write for lots of magazines,
not all of which reach this standard.
If you're a hobbyist or home user this isn't going to be for you. But if you cut code then this is one magazine you can't afford to miss.
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