--- title: Classic texts in computer science date: "2006-06-21T12:00:00Z" categories: - top-10-lists wp_id: 290 --- [Classic texts in computer science](http://www.zafar.se/bkz/wiki/view/43bafac8c8570f4f). Worth reading for the sheer insight. Update: The link didn't seem to work in Feb 2007. Here's the list. - [An axiomatic basis for computer programming](http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~worboys/processes/hoare%20axiomatic.pdf) by C. A. R. Hoare - [Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP)](http://www.usingcsp.com/) by C. A. R. Hoare - [Call-by-name, call-by-value, and the lambda calculus](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/gdp/publications/cbn_cbv_lambda.pdf) by Gordon Plotkin - [Towards a theory of type structure](ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/jcr/theotypestr.pdf) by John C. Reynolds - [Definitional interpreters for higher-order programming languages](ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/jcr/defint.ps.gz) by John C. Reynolds - [An APL Machine 1970](http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/slacreports/slac-r-114.html) by Philip S. Abrams - [Henry Baker's Archive of Research Papers (many classic Lisp papers)](http://www.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/) - [The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engin](http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf) by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page - [No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering](http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~maratb/readings/NoSilverBullet.html) by Frederic P. Brooks, Jr. - [A Mathematical Theory of Communication](http://www.unil.ch/webdav/site/ling/shared/ElementStatText/Shannon1948.pdf) by Claude Shannon - [Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems](http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~jkong/research/security/shannon1949.pdf) by Claude Shannon - [Bayesian Networks without Tears](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/Charniak_91.pdf) by Eugene Charniak - [A Universal Algorithm for Sequential Data Compression](http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee398a/resources/ziv:77-SDC.pdf) by Jacob Ziv and Abraham Lempel - [A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks 1970](http://www.cs.duke.edu/~junyang/cps216/papers/codd-1970.pdf) by Edgar F. Codd - [Let's Build a Compiler 1988-1995](http://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/) by Jack Crenshaw - [Gauging Similarity via N-Grams: Language-Independent Sorting, Categorization, and Retrieval of Text](http://gnowledge.sourceforge.net/damashek-ngrams.pdf) by Marc Damashek - [Worse Is Better](http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html) by Richard P. Gabriel - [Hints on Programming Language Design](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~necula/cs263/handouts/hoarehints.pdf) by C.A.R. Hoare - [Why Functional Programming Matters](http://www.math.chalmers.se/~rjmh/Papers/whyfp.pdf) by John Hughes - [The Design of APL](http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/174/ibmrd1704F.pdf) by Kenneth E. Iverson - [The Early History Of Smalltalk](http://www.metaobject.com/papers/Smallhistory.pdf) by Alan Kay - [Computer Programming as an Art](http://fresh.homeunix.net/~luke/misc/knuth-turingaward.pdf) by Donald E. Knuth - [The next 700 programming languages](http://www.cs.utah.edu/~wilson/compilers/old/papers/p157-landin.pdf) by Peter J. Landin - [Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and their Computation by Machine (Part I) 1960](http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html) by John McCarthy - [FORTH - A Language for Interactive Computing](http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~bolo/shipyard/4th_1970/4th_1970.html) by Charles H.Moore - [Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years 2001](http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html) by Peter Norvig - [Parenthetically Speaking, a collection of essays from the 1990s](http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/About-PS.html) by Kent M. Pitman - [The Definition and Implementation of a Computer Language based on constraints](ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/500-999/AITR-595.ps) by Guy Lewis Steele Jr. - [Growing a Language](http://www.cs.umbc.edu/331/resources/papers/gls-grow-lang.pdf) by Guy Lewis Steele Jr. - [Epigrams on Programming](http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html) by Alan J. Perlis - [The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures](http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/gionis/cc05/cook.pdf) by Stephen A. Cook - [Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence](http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/steps.html) by Marvin Minsky - [The Original 'Lambda Papers'](http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html) by Guy Steele and Gerald Sussman - [A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems](http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/rsapaper.pdf) by R.L. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman - [The UNIX Time-Sharing System](http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/cacm.html) by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson --- ## Comments - **jawahar** _6 Feb 2007 5:52 am_: anand this link is not working !! - **[Classic-texts-in-computer-science – maxviv](https://maxviv.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/classic-texts-in-computer-science/)** _5 Jun 2016 7:15 pm_ _(pingback)_: […] Classic texts in computer science […]