Creating a Computer Science Canon: a Course of 'Classic' Readings in Computer Science

摘要

Computer science has a reputation of being a discipline in a perpetual state of accelerated progress―a discipline in which our techniques, our hardware, our software systems, and our literature rarely exhibit a staying power of more than several years. While undeniably exciting, this state of continual intellectual upheaval can leave computer science students (and faculty) with a disturbing sense that there is no essential core of great work within the discipline. This paper describes a readings course entitled "Computer Science: the Canon" whose purpose is to counter this perception by exploring a set of "great works" in computer science. We describe our own (undoubtedly idiosyncratic) reading list used for the course, and discuss several central issues involved in offering such a course within a computer science curriculum.