<nerd warning = on> Nerd alert! Nerd alert!

Here is the list I chose in ACM‘s voting over favorite computer science classic:

• Classics in Software Engineering  Yourdon, E.
• Common Lisp  Steele, G.
• The Elements of Programming Style  Kernighan, B. W. and Plauger, P. J.
• Estimating software costs  Jones, T. C.
• First draft of a report on the EDVAC  Newmann, J. v.
• Human Problem Solving  Newell, A.
• Mindstorms  Papert, S.
• Operating Systems  Madnick, S. E. and Donovan, J. J.
• Perceptrons (Minsky, I suppose)
• The REXX language: a practical approach to programming  Cowlishaw, M. F.
• SIMULA 67 common base language, (Norwegian Computing Center. Publication)  Dahl, O.
• Sketchpad  Sutherland, I. E.
• Smalltalk-80: bits of history, words of advice  G. Krasner, Ed.
• Smalltalk-80: the interactive programming environment  Goldberg, A.
• Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation  Goldberg, A. and Robson, D.
• Software creativity  Glass, R. L.
• Software psychology  Shneiderman, B.
• Structured Programming  Dahl, O. J.
• Systems Programming  Donovan, J. J.
• Understanding Natural Language  Winograd, T. 

The rules for candidates are pretty peculiar – the book has to be out of print, for example. One book I missed was Winograd, T. and F. Flores (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition, but perhaps it is still in print. I would also have liked to see Eames, C. and R. Eames (1990). A Computer Perspective, though that is more of a computer history book.  Not to mention a book I know is out of print, namely Montgomery Phister’s (1979) Data Processing Technology and Economics, a great overview of everything you could wish for of economic and technical data on computers from 1955 to 1978, published by Digital.

It seems I will have to confess to a certain managerial bent, as well as shameless promotion of OO and Norwegians…. 

</nerd warning=off>

Ahhh, that felt good. My sincere apologies….

PS: Also Sethi, R. (1989). Programming Languages; Concepts and Constructs. The dragon book. Sorry about that.