For anyone not aware, pretty much every BYTE issue is in the Archive. If you have a favorite article from childhood that you want to update for your kids, it's a gold mine. There are hundreds of tutorials ranging from introductions to programming for people who've never done so before to incredibly complex programming language implementations.
A general rule of thumb is that any cover with a photograph on it is past the magazine's prime, and you'll probably have a lot more fun looking through older ones instead.
(Edited s/picture/photograph at suggestion of TMWNN for more concision.)
>A general rule of thumb is that any cover with a ~~picture~~ photograph on it is past the magazine's prime, and you'll probably have a lot more fun looking through older ones instead.
The first three don't have illustrations. There's one or two after that in the "good" run of BYTE that don't. All of the rest do. After 1987, their illustrator was replaced with a photographer and Photoshop.
«From 1975 to 1986, Byte covers usually featured the artwork of Robert Tinney. These covers made Byte visually unique. In 1987, Tinney's paintings were replaced by product photographs, and Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" column was discontinued.»
I said it was a rule of thumb, not an exact measurement.
The more experienced programmer seeking cybernetic high adventure must first defeat the friendliness engineered into the machine to unleash its throbbing brute power.
Played on the 2600 at a neghbours house as a kid, and grew up around Amiga hackers. For many years I have wanted to find a way to pitch one of the luxury conglomerates like Kering, LVMH, or Richmont, on acquiring all the Atari brand assets and relaunching it as a heritage technology brand (it's the Barbour of tech) that does acquisitions of niche craft tech companies using a business model akin to the way Hermés supports its artisans, and then create products to compete with Apple. Lux tech has always been too vulgar and they could never get it right because they didn't understand it. But by acquiring the right niche technologists under a cool umbrella, in 10 years I could make it bigger than Yamaha.
I was also happy to find old issues of Computer Language Magazine [1] which I used to love back in those days even though many of the articles were way beyond me.
They also have Nibble Magazine for Apple ][ Enthusiasts [2] with playable versions of their code diskettes! The magazine images are all in monochrome though as they were extracted from microfilm, and one needs to sign up and borrow the magazine to see the full contents. It's worth supporting the Internet Archive to do so though.
I remember typing in the machine code listings to get some software to run, and proofing long printouts on the bus ride to and from school when they didn't work! Developing fundamental development skills!
The Introduction to Atari Graphics was a pretty damn nice article. I loved programming the Antic and Pokey (sound) chips in the Atari 8-bit computers. You could really do things the Apple folks couldn't. Plus, four joystick / paddle ports were fun to hook up electronics to.
>The Introduction to Atari Graphics was a pretty damn nice article.
The entirety of De Re Atari (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Re_Atari>), the first substantial technical information for Atari 8-bit, was excerpted in BYTE. This article is part of the series.
I used mine for about a year. Ended up in some user group, who set me up. Was a teen at the time. I did notice the difference, but not as much as I might have. Did not begin to get any typing skills, until much later.
Today, I actually enjoy the occassional time I get the machine out. That keyboard looks really cool, and the little click brings me impressions from earlier, simpler times.
If only those machines came with a system language compiler... As a kid, having to go through BASIC for coding anything held me back from learning the important stuff. When I met my first PCs with Turbo Pascal in college, it was a revelation. But the machine and OS were much more boring than the Amiga and Ataris.
If you're new to BYTE, you should spend a little time exploring: https://archive.org/search.php?query=byte%20magazine
A general rule of thumb is that any cover with a photograph on it is past the magazine's prime, and you'll probably have a lot more fun looking through older ones instead.
(Edited s/picture/photograph at suggestion of TMWNN for more concision.)