It was conceived as a title aimed at professional programmers, in contrast to the majority of hobbyist-oriented computer magazines of the period.

The magazine's heyday coincided with the availability of cheap PC clones running MS-DOS and the first widely adopted version of Windows,[a] both factors which encouraged the spread of programming into smaller businesses and created an audience for .EXE and similar titles that followed.

The magazine featured regular columns on C++, Java, Visual Basic and Unix and took an early interest in Linux and open source more generally, particularly under the editorship of David Mery, featuring interviews with prominent open source and free software proponents including Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman.

The magazine's second editor, Robert Schifreen, had previously been notorious for his involvement in the hacking of a Telecom Gold account belonging to Prince Philip.

In later years, EXE began to feature more product reviews and 'advertorial' content such as salary surveys, as its publishers sought to make the magazine more commercially focused.