
Creating a Computer Science Canon (2003) [pdf] - lainon
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~ctg/pubs/sigcsecanon.pdf
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justin66
It is ironic that a paper calling for a CS canon does not follow any of the
ACM or IEEE formatting guidelines for submitting a paper, such that a reader
could tell when it was published.

So this paper came out at some point in the last... fifteen years?

edit: thanks for updating this with the date

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lisper
That the HN headline was updated with the date does not make your point any
less valid. _All_ content needs to have a date on it. (And as long as I'm
ranting about this, the word "latest" should never appear as a substring in
any title or file name unless it's a symlink.) People seem to continually lose
sight of the fact that it will not always be now.

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llimllib
Can we put together all the listed papers here? Reply with one if you know
where it is. One paper per reply please.

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llimllib
My personal favorite, Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication:
[http://worrydream.com/refs/Shannon%20-%20A%20Mathematical%20...](http://worrydream.com/refs/Shannon%20-%20A%20Mathematical%20Theory%20of%20Communication.pdf)

~~~
lisper
Heh, just found a mistake in this paper:

"A device with two stable positions, such as a relay or a flip-flop circuit,
can store one bit of information. N such devices can store N bits, since the
total number of possible states is 2^N and log(base2) 2^N =􏰃 N."

This is true only if the devices/bits are in a known order. If they are
unordered, then N devices can store only log(N) bits of information (because
the state of the system is completely characterized by the number of 1 bits,
and that ranges from 0 to N).

This is not a completely academic observation. For example, if you have two
thumb drives, each of which stores N bits, the two of them together store 2N
bits ONLY if you can tell which drive is which. If you can't distinguish them,
then the sum total of information they contain is 2N-1 bits.

~~~
chj
> This is true only if the devices/bits are in a known order.

I think that's an assumption.

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minademian
The first three paragraphs in chapter 2 are thought-provoking in that they
challenge you to shift from a transactional model of consumption of
information - "I need to read these books to achieve something" \- to one that
is more instructional - "I need to read these books to learn how to think".

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susanrigetti
I was a little surprised by the list of works included in the canon until I
realized after a more careful reading that it's more of a reading list for a
particular class the author appears to teach.

I'd love to see an actual CS canon some time. Anyone know of anything that
comes closer to one?

~~~
cachvico
1- [https://teachyourselfcs.com/](https://teachyourselfcs.com/)

2- [http://mfleck.cs.illinois.edu/building-
blocks/](http://mfleck.cs.illinois.edu/building-blocks/)

~~~
ycombinete
I'd love it if some more people could vouch for these sources. The both look
very interesting.

~~~
susanrigetti
They're both interesting but they're not "canons" in the traditional sense.
The first is a short resource of the bare-bones subjects in CS with the
handful of most popular books, and the second is an intro book about basic
math and algorithms.

edit: to add, I think they're interesting but I would not refer people to
them.

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9erdelta
What would be next level is to find the papers, then also find prominent
programmers/professors etc to do a youtube series and discuss said papers.
I'll take a stab at reading the papers, but like great works of literature I'm
sure I'll miss things that a more educated person could highlight. Imagine
someone like Alan Kay expounding on one of "The Canon" for ~15-20 minutes.

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Upvoter33
Came to see the CS Cannon. Left learning how to differentiate Canon and
Cannon.

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a3n
Canon is a short Cannon, for close quarters shelling or installation on narrow
ships.

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TeMPOraL
This is my headcanon now. Do not confuse with a head cannon.

~~~
mcguire
Is a head cannon a device for projecting noggins or an article of millinery?

