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Linus Torvalds on Git. It's funny, and it really does tell you a lot about why Git is the way it is. Bryan Cantrill's 2011(?) Lightning talk on ta(1). It's fascinating, but it also shows you just long-lived software can be. Randall Munroe's Talk on the JoCo cruise. Because it's effing hilarious, and teaches everybody the important art of building a ball pit inside your house. Finally, an honorable mention to three papers that don't qualify, but which I think you should read anyway. Reflections on Trusting Trust: This is required reading for... Everybody. It describes a particularly insidious hack, and discusses its ramifications for security. In the Beginning Was The Command Line: If you want get into interface design, programming, or ever work with computers, this is required. It's a snapshot of the 90's, a discussion of operating systems, corporations, and society as we know it. But more importantly, it's a crash course in abstractions. Before you can contribute to the infinite stack of turtles we programmers work with, you should probably understand why it's there, and what it is. Finally, The Lambda Papers. If you've ever wondered how abstractions work, and how they're modeled... This won't really tell you, not totally, but they'll give you something cool to think about, and give you the start of an answer. |
If we're going for papers, then I'm guessing books are allowed too. If so, for anyone interested in giving themselves a grounding in the fundamentals, it's worth checking out Code by Charles Petzold. I've been going through it, it's excellently written, and has helped me fill in gaps in my understanding of how computers work.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Sof...