Customer Reviews

Great Papers in Computer Science

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This book is a compendium of well-known papers in Computer Science. Hence, a review can only focus on the selection and editing of papers. To get selection out of the way, the papers are indeed among the most fundamental pieces of work in Computer Science. Unfortunately the book fails horribly in the editing category. The amount and variety of errors found on many pages is remarkable. The introduction of the first paper talks about MP(sic)-completeness. But where the amusement really turns into frustration is when following an algorithm or mathematical argument becomes impossible because of the amount of "noise". For instance, I spent several minutes trying to understand Dijkstra's Concurrent Programming Control algorithm in page 379. After my initial discouragement and when I proved that the algorithm cannot possibly work, I realized that the "equals" sign (=) on pages 379 and 380 should have been a "not equals". This may seem like an isolated example and I'm certainly not claiming that the text is unreadable. Nevertheless, I feel that the typographical errors (or editing oversights) would discourage many readers. Another complaint I have is about the lack of references to the original sources of the papers, or the affiliations of the authors. The typeface and general quality of reproduction is also far from satisfactory. I have not read this book in its entirety (very few people ever will because of its nature). I would not, however, recommend it to anyone (particularly undergraduate students of Computer Science).