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Liskov's Reading List for Computer Scientists (jpirker.com)
109 points by aliu22 on Oct 29, 2016 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments


That is a good list for Computer Science years 1950-1975, however, I would rather see important things that is relevant 1975-2015.


I think it's really important to remember that a lot of these papers are relevant and important for modern systems.

"The Morning Paper" did a series in September on a bunch of older papers from the 70s about system design. https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/09/page/3/

As an example, https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/09/05/on-the-criteria-to-be-us... is just as relevant now as it was then. It shocks me over and over to find papers like that one; we as an industry seem to miss and forget the lessons that our forebearers learned.


I attended Barbara Liskov's talk at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum and the list was not meant to be for 1975-2015. It was a more personal experience (including some history) about Liskov and her career.


If we're being picky I'd rather see important things that is relevant 2016-66.


Working link for: Wirth, N. (1971). Program development by stepwise refinement - https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Articles/StepwiseRefi...


Computer Science is notorious for ignoring history. Back in the 80s I would go down to the library and read the literature. When I ran across something exciting I'd go back to my office and use it for some problem I was working on.

My colleagues were always astonished at my "brilliance". It didn't matter that I referenced the paper in the code and even brandished the hardcopy (thats what we had in those days) -- it was inconceivable that I might have found something in the literature and made more sense that they were working with a "genius".

When I moved into Pharma 20 years later it was the opposite: we would find interesting and relevant results in papers more than 20 years old.


As you probably know, there's a big "gap" between Computer Science and programming. While on HN we mostly talk about in terms of job interviews, it's more endemic than that. Most of my colleagues (and myself, many times) dismiss anything related to academia or academic papers as too hard, theoretical, and not useful.

This not only applies to simple things such as coding a paper's algorithms to test it out, but can be manifested as a refusal to read old literature to avoid making the same mistakes people did decades ago.


> "...to avoid making the same mistakes people did decades ago."

I don't understand this part -- do you mean the past has nothing to teach the present?


The Morning Paper recently looked at the list: https://blog.acolyer.org/?s=liskov




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