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Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)

358 points| ColinWright | 14 years ago |blog.objectmentor.com | reply

26 comments

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[+] drv|14 years ago|reply
A paper that would be on my personal list is "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic" (Goldberg): http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_go...
[+] unwind|14 years ago|reply
Thanks for mentioning it, and saving me the work of typing (or copying) the long title. This paper is great. If I had a dime for every time I've linked to it on Stack Overflow, I would have a lot of foreign change of little practical use.
[+] ColinDabritz|14 years ago|reply
There was an excellent cs theory stack exchange question on this:

http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1168/what-papers... [pdf]

The top two are nearly tied for: "A mathematical theory of communication" by Claude Shannon

http://guohanwei.51.net/code/A%20Mathematical%20Theory%20of%...

"On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" by Alan Turing

http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~ctg/classes/lib/canon/turing-com... [pdf]

I would add that

'The Annotated Turing' by Charles Petzold

http://www.theannotatedturing.com/

is an excellent treatment of Turings paper, including much of the relevant additional math and computing history both before and after.

[+] onan_barbarian|14 years ago|reply
It's not a terrible list, but it's very biased towards the question "how should we structure computer programs?".

This is a good question, but perhaps not the _only_ question, and I'm not sure that a top 10 list would be quite so focused on it, at the expense of algorithms, architecture, concurrency, networks, formal methods, etc.

I also doubt the ranty "Worse is Better" should be on any top 10 list, influential or not. Some of these papers seem better suited to give someone a background to furiously prognosticate here on HN and perhaps LtU than to do anything of consequence.

[+] quanticle|14 years ago|reply
>This is a good question, but perhaps not the _only_ question.

I agree with narrow interpretation of your statement, but disagree with the broad one. Yes, the structure of computer programs isn't the only problem in computer science/software engineering. However, I would argue that it's the most important question. Moreover, it's the only question that translates well across domains. Algorithms, concurrency models, networks, etc. all will vary depending on the exact problem you are trying to solve. The principles behind good program structure, however, remain the same. It doesn't matter if you're making a computational fluid dynamics simulation, nearest neighbor classifier, relational database, enterprise inventory control, or a simple blog engine; taking the time to create a good structure for your program always pays off.

[+] fogus|14 years ago|reply
I would add "Out of the Tarpit" by Ben Moseley and Peter Marks. I read it at least twice a year.

http://web.mac.com/ben_moseley/frp/paper-v1_01.pdf

[+] mudge|14 years ago|reply
Thanks for posting this fogus. This is great so far.
[+] pnathan|14 years ago|reply
I've always found rpg's Patterns of Software to have some deep insights into the nature of software systems. Particularly the ruminations on habitability.
[+] Iv|14 years ago|reply
A programmer should not encourage paywalls.