No wonder Dr. Dobb’s folded

No wonder TechWeb whacked Dr. Dobb’s Journal, if this is what they think enterprise software developers care about. (“Intimidated by coding?” It’s revealing that TechWeb views Dr. Dobb’s readership as non-technical.)

However, I do want a neat Dr. Dobbs bobblehead for my extensive toy collection. (Yes, while the journal used to be named Dr. Dobb’s, singular possessive, the character is named Dr. Dobbs, plural.)

I received a marketing email from TechWeb today asking me, “Have YOU won yet?” and which directed me toward the challenge:

Play! Modify! Win!

Welcome to Dr. Dobb’s Challenge Deuce, a special game competition brought to you in association with the world-renowned Dr. Dobb’s for software developers and Microsoft Visual Studio.

Use Dr. Dobbs and his team of friends to play the game and collect Visual Studio power-ups — or team up with your own friends to develop your own games and levels!

You can win from a prize pool of $10,000 in two ways:

1. Use the “Create” option to make new in-game levels in the Silverlight application itself, and be automatically entered into a ‘best level’ competition, with Dr. Dobbs Bobblehead doll prizes given out weekly, plus monthly ‘best level’ prizes of $500!

2. If you really want to flex your creative muscle, download the Silverlight sample application and modify the code and art in a free trial version of Visual Studio to make your own completely custom game, then get it showcased on the Dr. Dobbs Challenge Deuce site. Intimidated by coding? There are a full set of tutorials on the site to walk you through your first steps to creating your masterpiece!

Use your creative side to make fiendish and cool new games — change the mechanics, add new levels, even change the entire game genre and win thousands of dollars doing it! Here’s all you need to know to participate.