Creative Computing was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution

Microcomputer revolution

The microcomputer revolution is a phrase used to describe the rapid advances of microprocessor-based computers from esoteric hobby projects to a commonplace fixture of homes in industrial societies...

. Published from 1974 until December 1985, Creative Computing covered the whole spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format than the rather technically-oriented BYTE. The magazine was founded by David H. Ahl

David H. Ahl

David H. Ahl is the founder of Creative Computing magazine. He is also the author of many how-to books, including BASIC Computer Games, the first million-selling computer book....

, who sold it to Ziff-Davis in the early 1980s, but remained as Editor-in-Chief. Featured writers included Robert Swirsky

Robert Swirsky

Robert Swirsky is a computer scientist, author, and pianist. In the early 1980s, Swirsky was one of the first regular contributors to the nascent computer magazine industry...

, David Lubar

David Lubar

David Lubar is an author of numerous books for teens. He is also an electronic game programmer, who programmedSuper Breakout for the Nintendo Game Boy, and Frogger for both the SNES and Game Boy. As a game designer, he designed the game Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge for the Nintendo Game Boy Color...

, and John J. Anderson

John J. Anderson

John J. Anderson or J.J. Anderson was a writer and editor covering computers and technology. The New Jersey native wrote for publications such as Computer Shopper and Atari Magazine. At the time of his death he was an editor for MacUser magazine in Foster City, California...

. The magazine regularly included BASIC

BASIC

BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....

 source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 for utility programs and games, which users could manually enter into their home computers.

At the end of its run, Creative Computing was attempting to refocus on business computing (as was the trend in most computer magazines of the time), but was not successful at this and ultimately ceased publication.

Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson

Theodor Holm Nelson is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published it in 1965...

, known for the invention of hypertext

Hypertext

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...

, was briefly the editor.

The April, 1980 issue of Creative Computing contained clever parodies of all of the major computer magazines of the time.

Further reading

• Ahl, David H., "Birth of a Magazine (History of Creative Computing)", in The Best of Creative Computing Volume 1 (published 1976)

External links

• Three Best of Creative Computing volumes are available at AtariArchives.org
• The full text of most of the issues from the last three years (1983-1985) of this magazine can be found at AtariMagazines.com