Ideas That Created the Future
by Lewis, Harry · first published 2021
64% recommend36% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Anthology of classic computer science papers, each with an introduction giving historical context from Aristotle onward. Suits working developers and CS students who want to know where the field's ideas came from.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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For just getting started I recommend collections: 1. Ideas That Created The Future[1]. It's a collection of fiftyish classic CS papers, with some commentary. 2. Wikipedia's list[2]. 3. Test of Time awards[3]. These are papers that have been around for a while and people still think…
on “Non-determinism in GPT-4 is caused by Sparse MoE” ↗* Understanding Computation: From Simple Machines to Impossible Programs by Tom Stuart. * Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists by Dennis Shasha et al. * Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science edited by Harry Lewis - Came across this book in another HN thread but i don't have it yet.
on “Ask HN: Top inspiring books on crucial CS ideas?” ↗…impractical, unless viewed with a blue background. "The Cathedral & The Bazaar" by Eric S Raymond "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution " by Steven Levy "The Soul of A New Machine" by Tracy Kidder "Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science" by Harry Lewis "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" Charles Pezold "The Gödelian Puzzle Book: Puzzles, Paradoxes and Proofs (Dover Math…
on “Ask HN: Interesting courses/books to counter a looming burnout?” ↗Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science Each paper is often over my head. There is an introduction to each that helps explain the paper and its context. A great journey through time. https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-That-Created-Future-Computer/dp...
on “Ask HN: Good Books on the History of Technology?” ↗Ideas that Created the Future by Harry Lewis has been a great read, I highly recommend it. It is a book full of the most influential papers for the field of computer science, according to the author. The author is a professor of computer…
on “What are the must read academic papers in computer science?” ↗See also the book or the course by Harry R. Lewis at Harvard: - Ideas That Created the Future https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-That-Created-Future-Computer/dp... - "Classics of CS" https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/34992/assignments/syllabu...
on “Most Influential Papers in Computer Science History” ↗Check out Harry Lewis’s “Ideas that Created the Future”
on “Ask HN: What are the 'classical' papers worth reading?” ↗Tangential but may be of interest: a cool book (compilation?) that somewhat addresses this topic is ‘Ideas That Created the Future’ edited by Harry R. Lewis [0]. [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ideas-created-future
on “When did computer science theory get so hard?” ↗…what's interesting and trending in "languages, libraries, tools, and techniques." Another approach that might help you find jumping off points for topics would be to review how we got here with a book like Ideas that Created the Future: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ideas-created-future. If you're primarily interested in opinionated lists of new libraries and stacks, Thoughtworks' Technology Radar https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar…
on “Ask HN: What should I read to get back “in the game”?” ↗…developers seem to have an interest in the history of their craft. Even when talking solely about those who spend their spare time learning about programming and CS. I love projects like The Daily Paper or Ideas That Created the Future because they give this context. We operate pretty much exclusively in this sort of bow wave of current best practice and tooling. This is why eg JavaScript works continually reinvents the wheel. In…
on “On the benefits of humanities in software engineering” ↗Oh, and one book I rather enjoyed was Ideas That Created the Future, which is not exactly a textbook (but is probably used by the author as such) so much as a survey on the history of computer science via primary sources. Each source has a 1-2 page summary providing context,…
on “Ask HN: Best value Comp. Sc. book for 100€?” ↗If this is up your alley, Ideas That Created the Future[1] has like 40 more, decent introductions to their ideas, and provides a sort of thematic throughline from Aristotle to the modern computer science. [1]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045308/ideas-that-created-th...
on “Most Influential Papers in Computer Science History” ↗…you're a moderately experienced developer. EDIT: Per Amazon there's a second edition of Code coming out at some point, but no date that I've been able to find. I've also got a copy of, but not yet read, Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science edited by Harry R. Lewis, the contents are in chronological order with the most recent in 1979. It has 46 different papers on computing, being largely historical this…
on “Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?” ↗The book will be released on February 2. "Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science" edited by Harry Lewis, and published by MIT Press.
on “Syllabus for Classics of Computer Science” ↗…wouldn't take the advice to follow waterfall or PMBOK literally. The post laments that it's hard to find Dr. Royce's original waterfall paper. That's probably true, I have my copy from a compilation book “Ideas that Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science” edited by Lewis [1]. I do agree that it's important to do things like scope out your demands of your AI agent, check-in on progress, give as clear a requirement and…
on “Engineers will do anything to avoid learning from history” ↗