Welcome to issue #100 of CODE Magazine! Yes, you read that right. The issue you hold in your hand (or on your screen reader) is officially #100. I've been Editor in Chief for a few over 90 of these issues and can tell you that it sure has been a wild and interesting ride. When I heard that we were coming up on issue #100, I called up the trusty guardians of our magazine data and requested some data points. Here are some interesting facts:

We've published 1,438 articles across our CODE Magazine, Online CODE Magazine, and CODE Focus imprints. These articles have been written by 282+ authors spanning 20+ countries across six of the seven continents. We've printed 6,000+ pages of content with nearly 3,000,000 words (our stats say 6,000,000 words but we had one PHP article that was like 3,000,000 words long ?? ). Our two most prolific authors are Paul Sheriff and Kevin Goff. These two authors have contributed nearly 80+ articles between them.

Now, let's take a look at some of my all-time favorite issues:

September/October 2002

The concept for this issue was one I concocted because of my inner nerd. I love learning new programming languages and the idea that the Common Language Runtime could support multiple languages intrigued me. We talked about languages like Eiffel, Perl, and a FoxPro toolkit. Over the years, we've added to our study of languages. We've run content on languages like PHP, Python, F#, Swift, Objective C, JavaScript, and many others. We'll continue exploring these languages as their adoption - or lack of - affects you, the reader.

I have a funny story about this issue. When the magazine came out, we overlooked a big player in our language coverage. Someone from a C++ compiler company sent an e-mail that said (I paraphrase): “Looks like you extended a finger to our language. How about showing us some love?” Take a look at the cover. This one lives on in my heart.

Figure 1: “Talk to the hand” takes on a whole new meaning.
Figure 1: “Talk to the hand” takes on a whole new meaning.

May/June 2009 Open Source

This issue was and still is near-and-dear to my heart. Eight years ago, we recognized that open source development/tools were important to our readers and began including topics like Mono, Hudson, NHibernate, and many more open source tools. Fast-forward to today and we can see that we were almost prescient with this issue. Mono became the foundation of Xamarin. Numerous frameworks from Microsoft are now fully open source, including ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework, ASP.NET Core, and many others. What seemed like a bunch of hippie fringe ideas has now become mainstream.

Figure 2: This was the Summer of Love CODE issue.
Figure 2: This was the Summer of Love CODE issue.

September/October 2016

Some of the more recent issues we've created live in my heart as overall great issues, too. This recent issue has content that's highly relevant to developers today. ASP.NET Core receives wide-spread adoption, Azure (and other cloud providers) add more options to their stack, and SQL Server 2016 has numerous cool features that developers can take advantage of today.

Figure 3: You'll want a cup of French roasted and a pastry with this issue.
Figure 3: You'll want a cup of French roasted and a pastry with this issue.

Why We Do What We Do

It's our goal at CODE to make sure that the words we put into publication are there for you, the reader. I want to take a moment to describe how we perceive our reader base. Our readers are JUST LIKE US: software developers charged with crafting software solutions for clients, businesses, charities, or just for the fun of it. When I work with authors on crafting the content we provide, I think of you first. I ask myself: Is this relevant to developers today? Can a developer use this information now? Will this be relevant to developers tomorrow?

Before I end this editorial, I want to send out a huge thanks to people who really make this magazine tick. Melanie Spiller is one of the best editors I've had the honor to work with. I'm serious. Without her, this magazine would be a shadow of its potential. I also want to thank Erik Ruthruff. Erik was Melanie's predecessor and is still one of the best people I've worked with. Also a big shout out to Markus and Ellen, the publishers of the magazine. Thanks for giving me the chance to be editor of this magazine. Finally, I want to send out a massive thank you to the authors. Without them, we don't have a magazine. There are too many to list, but you know who you are!

Thanks for allowing me to wander down memory lane. Now get coding!