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Inspiring Papers

In the interest of discovering some further reading material,
I have created a quick survey open to all LtU'ers..

Please name:

1) One of your favourite papers of all time
2) A recent paper you consider ground-breaking in some way
3) A lesser-known paper that you feel ought to be more widely read

Any PL topics welcome!

By SamK at 2008-10-05 23:41 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 7537 reads

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My recurring themes

A recurring theme in my postings has been Amorphous Computing. For 1 and 3, I'd have Butera's PhD thesis, Paintable Computing. The Amorphous Computing Manifesto has some familiar names, Abelson and Sussman.

Amorphous computing is closely related to biocomputing and in that vein I recently looked for a book for the purpose of understanding the "primitives, means of combination, and means of abstraction" that nature provides. I came across Bionanotechnology. This book is not PL or even CS related, but you can come at it from a perspective of "how do I program this?" Despite many biologically inspired ideas in computer science, biology is an area where it seems many computer scientists are relatively weak (I certainly am.) At any rate, this book is fascinating.

Another recurring theme of mine is exokernels and Xok in particular. Here it is Engler's PhD thesis that I refer to and also falls under 1 and 3 for me. This is the modern analog of Synthesis OS paper, Massalin's PhD thesis and another inspiring paper. This is an operating systems paper but there are direct application of PLT in both directions.

By Derek Elkins at Mon, 2008-10-06 00:23 | login or register to post comments

Obligatory...

  1. Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?
  2. Conservative Logic
By Greg Buchholz at Mon, 2008-10-06 00:40 | login or register to post comments

Growing a Language

In the "favourite paper" category: Guy Steele's Growing a Language. Video of the original presentation upon which the paper is based is available here.

By Allan McInnes at Mon, 2008-10-06 01:10 | login or register to post comments

The computer as medium

My favorites are Tracing the Dynabook: A Study of Technocultural Transformations, a Ph.D. thesis by John Maxwell, and a couple of essays:

The Art of Lisp and Writing, by Richard Gabriel, and History of Thinking, by Chris Crawford.

By Mark Miller at Wed, 2008-10-08 08:18 | login or register to post comments

Connection Machine

I was perusing the stacks at my uni last week and found, of all things, Hillis' ph.d disseration on the Connection Machine which goes into a lot of detail on CM Lisp and the problems the CM was meant to tackle.

The Connection Machine story is very interesting in it's own right because of the history and personalities that participated. Plus the subsequent startup and commercilizatioh of the technology in the 80's - 90's time frame, the company being bought and the founders scattering to the four winds.

By markt at Fri, 2008-10-10 03:05 | login or register to post comments