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Will Software Engineering Ever Be Engineering?
From Communications of the ACM

Will Software Engineering Ever Be Engineering?

Considering whether software engineering and engineering can share a profession.

From ACM Opinion

Don't ­nderestimate the Singularity

Although Paul Allen paraphrases my 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near, in the title of his essay (cowritten with his colleague Mark Greaves), it appears that he...

From ACM Opinion

Dennis Ritchie: The Other Man Inside Your Iphone

The groundbreaking work he did with Ken Thompson led to the operating system behind everything from set-top boxes to the iPhone, but who sings the praises of...

From ACM Opinion

Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On

The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won’t match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.

From ACM Opinion

The Singularity Isn't Near

 Futurists like Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have argued that the world is rapidly approaching a tipping point, where the accelerating pace of smarter and smarter...

From ACM Opinion

Innovation Starvation

My lifespan encompasses the era when the United States of America was capable of launching human beings into space.

Testing: Failing to Succeed
From Communications of the ACM

Testing: Failing to Succeed

There are two situations in software testing that scare testers: when they see "too many" defects and when they do not see "enough."

File-System Litter
From Communications of the ACM

File-System Litter

Cleaning up your storage space quickly and efficiently.

What Became of Multi-Core Programming Problems?
From ACM Opinion

What Became of Multi-Core Programming Problems?

As the Intel Developer Forum gets under way this week, one hardly unexpected theme of CEO Paul Otellini's keynote address was that Moore's Law continues. Ivy...

From ACM News

The 10 Commandments of Steve

More than anything else, Jobs's genius is in managing the creative process. Here's his playbook.

Let's Get Back to Real Space Exploration
From ACM Opinion

Let's Get Back to Real Space Exploration

Time to ditch the black armbands and look beyond low Earth orbit again. The shuttle's passing marks the start of an exciting new era.

From ACM Opinion

Let Our Bots Do Our Tweeting For ­S

My tweets generally reflect a set of parochial interests I continually revisit: the shuffle function in iTunes, the Phillies’ crummy batting lineup, reviews of...

Arrogance in Business Planning
From Communications of the ACM

Arrogance in Business Planning

Technology business plans that assume no competition — ever.

Managing Time, Part 2
From Communications of the ACM

Managing Time, Part 2

Masterful time management means not just tracking of messages in your personal environment, but managing your coordination network with others.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Global IT Outsourcing
From Communications of the ACM

Corporate Social Responsibility and Global IT Outsourcing

How to improve IT outsourcing relationships while doing good for society.

In Praise of 'Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill'
From Communications of the ACM

In Praise of 'Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill'

Sixty years ago, Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler, and Stanley Gill produced the first textbook on programming: The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital...

From ACM Opinion

Can Math Beat Financial Markets?

Wall Street's wild swings last week helped skew both retirement portfolios and mathematical models of the financial markets. After all, a standard Gaussian function—a...

From ACM News

Google's Self-Driving Wreck: Really Human Error?

When a self-driving car crashes, one just has to wonder about those robots. Are they really all they're cracked up to be? Or might they be just as cracked as...

From ACM Opinion

Google's Instant Pages and the Joys of a Computer that Can Read Your Mind

Chrome is reading my mind. When I type a search query in Google's Web browser, it offers me the most likely results right in the address bar. It doesn't justWikipedia...

­ltimate Logic: To Infinity and Beyond
From ACM Opinion

­ltimate Logic: To Infinity and Beyond

The mysteries of infinity could lead us to a fantastic structure above and beyond mathematics as we know it.
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