5 ms·

Ask HN: Favorite computer science, software engineering papers and essays

7 points by elitepleb 6y ago

harveytoro 6y ago
My two recommendations are: - Communicating Sequential Processes https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Hoare78.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Hoare78.pdf - Crash-Only Software https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotos03/tech/full_papers/candea/candea.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotos03/tech/full_paper...
clusmore 6y ago
Definitely Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture, Reflections on Trusting Trust. [0] [0]: https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p7...
- dllthomas 6y ago
  In case you hadn't caught it, there's a very cool way to catch "trusting trust" style attacks called "diverse double compiling". The idea is that compilers from sufficiently disparate sources are very unlikely to have the same malware, and while different compilers aren't expected to produce the same output for the same source they are expected to produce functionally identical output for the same source. So if you compile a compiler (where you've vetted the source) with an array of compilers, you have something that, applied to (again) that same source should produce something bitwise identical - any deviations are an attack or a bug in at least one of your compilers, and can be investigated manually. https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/ https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/
diehunde 6y ago
These are some interesting and easy to read papers that laid out the foundation for many other distributed technologies in use today;: - Bitcoin - MapReduce - The Google File System (GFS) - Spanner Sorry I don't have the links but they can easily be found online.
Kuzutsukake 6y ago
These articles are personal philosophies you might take up using the principles of CS. So while not technically rigorous, I think they are like chicken soup for the hackers soul...I found these two articles to be both interesting and inspiring: The Single Responsibility Principle Revisited - https://thevaluable.dev/single-responsibility-principle-revisited/ https://thevaluable.dev/single-responsibility-principle-revi... Climbing the wrong hill - http://cdixon.org/2009/09/19/climbing-the-wrong-hill/ http://cdixon.org/2009/09/19/climbing-the-wrong-hill/
giantg2 6y ago
The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion by Mitnick were interesting to me when I read them a long time ago. They really show how important humans are to a system. You can have high tech security equiptment and all it takes is someone to go dumpster diving or appeal to another person's human nature. I didn't finish it, but I enjoyed The Best of 2600. It's a collection of the old 2600 magazine. Lots of cool older stories in there.

7 points by elitepleb 6y ago

My two recommendations are: - Communicating Sequential Processes https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Hoare78.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~crary/819-f09/Hoare78.pdf - Crash-Only Software https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotos03/tech/full_papers/candea/candea.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotos03/tech/full_paper...

clusmore 6y ago

Definitely Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture, Reflections on Trusting Trust. [0] [0]: https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p7...

dllthomas 6y ago
In case you hadn't caught it, there's a very cool way to catch "trusting trust" style attacks called "diverse double compiling". The idea is that compilers from sufficiently disparate sources are very unlikely to have the same malware, and while different compilers aren't expected to produce the same output for the same source they are expected to produce functionally identical output for the same source. So if you compile a compiler (where you've vetted the source) with an array of compilers, you have something that, applied to (again) that same source should produce something bitwise identical - any deviations are an attack or a bug in at least one of your compilers, and can be investigated manually. https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/ https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust/

diehunde 6y ago

These are some interesting and easy to read papers that laid out the foundation for many other distributed technologies in use today;: - Bitcoin - MapReduce - The Google File System (GFS) - Spanner Sorry I don't have the links but they can easily be found online.

Kuzutsukake 6y ago

These articles are personal philosophies you might take up using the principles of CS. So while not technically rigorous, I think they are like chicken soup for the hackers soul...I found these two articles to be both interesting and inspiring: The Single Responsibility Principle Revisited - https://thevaluable.dev/single-responsibility-principle-revisited/ https://thevaluable.dev/single-responsibility-principle-revi... Climbing the wrong hill - http://cdixon.org/2009/09/19/climbing-the-wrong-hill/ http://cdixon.org/2009/09/19/climbing-the-wrong-hill/

giantg2 6y ago

The Art of Deception and The Art of Intrusion by Mitnick were interesting to me when I read them a long time ago. They really show how important humans are to a system. You can have high tech security equiptment and all it takes is someone to go dumpster diving or appeal to another person's human nature. I didn't finish it, but I enjoyed The Best of 2600. It's a collection of the old 2600 magazine. Lots of cool older stories in there.