The Third Bit

The ACM’s Top 25

Between October 2005 and January 2006, the ACM polled its professional members, asking them to nominate and then vote for books they considered classics. The final list is:

1. The Elements of Programming Style
2. Classics in Software Engineering
3. Theory of Parsing, Translation and Compiling
4. Pascal User Manual and Report
5. Computer and the Brain
6. Selected Writings on Computing
7. Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation
8. Compiler Construction
9. The Relational Model for Database Management: Version 2
10. A Programming Language
11. Formal Languages and Their Relation to Automata
12. Writing Efficient Programs
13. Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines
14. The Multics System
15. Operating System Principles
16. IBM System/360 Principles of Operation
17. Mindstorms
18. The Architecture of Concurrent Programs
19. Structured Programming
20. 201 Principles of Software Development
21. Artificial Intelligence
22. MacIntosh Human Interface Guidelines
23. Cryptography and Data Security
24. Essays in Computing Science
25. Anatomy of LISP

Of these, I’ve heard of seven, and read five.