The August edition of MSDN Magazine carries an announcement that will come as a blow not only to its current subscribers, but to all those who have read its articles online. Microsoft is ceasing its publication and the very final issue will be published in November.

According to Editor-in-Chief, Michaael Desmond:

We realized that it is time to retire MSDN Magazine and to carry on its work through Web channels like docs.microsoft.com.

It also stated that all previous issues will be archived and available online and reassured subscribers that unused portions of the subscriptions would be refunded after the November issue has been sent out.

MSDN Magazine originated over three decades ago as two separate magazines, Microsoft Systems Journal and Microsoft Internet Developer, which combined into a single publication in 2000. 

Thanks to the high quality of its articles and the calibre of its regular columnists MSDN Magazine, has given Microsoft a claim to academic respectability. As an online publication from 2009 its articles were freely available to anyone with a Microsoft account.

I Programmer even covered some of its issues when we found them particularly interesting, and even when we found them lacking! For example back in January 2012, Mike James wrote:

It's the start of a new year and the start of a new volume for MSDN Magazine. ... Things are changing in the Microsoft world and you would expect that to be reflected in MSDN Magazine - it is, but at the moment only just. We do have articles on WP7, but where are the articles on Windows 8 and WinRT and the whole revolution that threatens to sideline .NET and Silverlight? What insights do we have about the future and how Microsoft programming is evolving?

At the end of 2012 Mike James looked at the December issue writing:

What does the December MSDN Magazine hold for us? Could it be anything to do with Microsoft technologies? The good news is that there is a lot of C# code.

MSDN Magazine used to be essential reading for anyone programming for the Microsoft environment. It still is up to a point, but it seems to be becoming increasingly general. This is good if you are general programmer but not so good if you work with Windows.

In the closure announcement, Microsoft stated:

As Microsoft products and services expanded exponentially over the years, MSDN Magazine has gone through its own evolution, as well. 

Comparing the cover of the C# edition from 2012 above with the latest on the topic from 2019  two things are obvious. Firstly, recent issues are slim pickings compared to what you could expect a few years back. Secondly, a lot of space has been devoted over the year's to projects and products that have fallen by the wayside.

Even so it is regrettable that not only is the print edition ceasing, Microsoft has called a halt to online publication as well.

MSDN Magazine will be missed.

More Information

An Important Update on MSDN Magazine

Related Articles

MSDN December 2012- Lots Of C# 

MSDN Magazine May 2012 - HTML5, ASP.NET and Neural Nets

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info