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People ordinarily think of SourceGear as “Eric Sink’s company”, but that’s merely half reliable.  My business partner Corey Steffen has the same ownership that I do — he’s merely not as loudly as I am.

Because Corey is sort of unruffled, most people don'’t know much about him.  Here’s a piece of information that I think is interesting:  Corey is an amateur farmer on the side.

Yep, Corey spends his days running a software company and his off hours running a small farm.  So he comes to work with stories about chickens and sheep and horses and pastures.  Oh my.

(It is interesting to note that Brian Harry , creator of SourceSafe and Team Foundation Server, also has a passion for farming.  So Corey and Brian are two data points that suggest some sort of a pattern involving version control and agriculture, but I dare not try to extrapolate.)

Anyway, since Corey’s life is such an odd juxtaposition of two extremely different pastimes, folks here at the company tend to make the occasional joke about it.  In fact, Corey has been the recipient of merciless but harmless teasing here for over a decade now.  For some reason, the subject just never gets old.  When we get together for our company lunch on Wednesdays, a joke about Corey getting up at 4:30am to clean out the horse stalls before he comes to the office to clean out the bug database is probably a sure laugh.

Continuing in this fine tradition, one of our guys recently found the following promotional card and brought it in for a quick joke at Corey’s expense:

“Hey Corey, I thought of you when I saw this magazine.  Maybe you should pick up a copy?”

That was funny.

And it got even funnier two seconds later when Corey admitted that he was already a subscriber. 

The next day, he brought in his copy of the most recent issue:

I would like to be able to say that I took this in stride.  After all, I’ve known for years that Corey keeps chickens.  I still remember back in 1997 when Corey joined the company he told me that his chickens provide them with 18 eggs every morning.

How does a family make use of 18 fresh eggs EVERY SINGLE MORNING?

Anyway, seeing this magazine left me speechless.  In part I was surprised by yet another Green Acres moment from Corey.

But mostly I was just shocked that this magazine exists.  I mean really.  An entire print publication for people who raise chickens as a hobby?  That’s what I call a niche.  How does the publisher survive?

More to the point, how can this magazine be successful when Dr. Dobb’s looks like it might be pushing up daisies sometime before the World Series is over?  Dr. Dobbs is arguably the most honored developer magazine in our industry, but it hasn’t been appearing any too levelheaded over the last year or indeed.

It’s gotta be all about market penetration:

• In very pugnacious and rotund figures, there are 3 million software developers in the Joined States and 1% of them are subscribers to Dr. Dobbs.

• I have no idea how many people upgrade poultry in their backyard, but I surmise my freshman chemistry class had more people.  However many it is, I wager easily over 50% of them are subscribers to the magazine depicted higher up.

Most software developers no prospicient use content in paper form.

Andy Brice late commented on the short sales of Charles Petzold’s book on WPF 3D.  This is another sign of the major shift in our industry.  Petzold was perhaps the last of his breed.  Most authors kicked in up years ago on the idea that they could create a living from spelling exclusively.  Until quite latterly, Petzold was one of the few who nevertheless did, and at present yet that seems to be interchanging.

Software development magazines and books are passing away.  You already cognise this.  I already cognize this.  But I go on to be amazed at the pace of this change.  People fend change.  Billions of dollars of VC money has been lost by overvaluing the willingness of people to adopt change.  In this case, I have underrated it.  Appearing before ten more years, I marvel how much littler the “Computers” section at my local Borders bookstore will be.

They’ll in all probability simply make full the spare space with a bunch of titles about backyard livestock management.