This, Creative Computing, Dr Dobbs, and Antic were my monthly computer education. I was a little ticked with what languages my Atari 400 with 48k (3rd party board) could run. I did dream a lot of some of the machines in the ads.

My favorite was Micro Cornucopia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Cornucopia). My local bookstore carried it and I eagerly awaited it every month. I was bummed when it shutdown in 1990 but by then I was in college and had real systems to play with.

I loved the quirky illustrations in the early Creative Computing mags.

BYTE had some great cover illustrations too, and IIRC, even some of the articles had great diagrams or drawings. IIRC there was an artist called (Robert?) Tinney who did many of the best looking and most famous covers, including maybe for the Smalltalk issue - which I think had a multicolored balloon on the cover - just searched and this is it:

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/597/1*9qr-I3aJLr0IrM256g...

Yes, his name was Robert Tinney:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tinney

Byte was my first too (and later on NET and Computerworld -- great education deriving from both).

Yeah, LISP was a bit much -- but hey! it also included an article with assembly code examples for the Z-80 Spectrum; I wish I had this magazine back in the day...

A thing I noticed: so many practical examples and code excerpts; I also spotted some math, sporting a Riemann integral no less :) - today's magazines are kindergarten-level by comparison. Of course, today's magazines are not aimed to the technical hobbyist anymore, so it's understandable... Btw: who are today's magazines targeting? Second question: what magazines?!

Mine (in the UK) was Personal Computer World. Though I snapped up Byte when I saw it in the shops

I would rather go through Computer Shopper. :)

Ah the memories.

100 pages of content and 1100 pages of ads.

:D

Quite true, my main reasons were the Atari, Acorn and Amiga sections, and the British humour in many articles.