 The October 2006 issue of the Communications of the ACM. |
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| Editor-in-Chief | Moshe Y. Vardi |
|---|---|
| Categories | Computer Science |
| Frequency | monthly |
| First issue | 1957 |
| Company | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Website | http://cacm.acm.org |
| ISSN | 0001-0782 |
Communications of the ACM (CACM) is the flagship monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). First published in 1957, CACM is sent to all ACM members, currently numbering about 80,000. The articles are intended for readers with backgrounds in all areas of computer science and information systems management. The focus is on the practical implications of advances in information technology and associated management issues; ACM also publishes a variety of more theoretical journals.
CACM straddles the boundary of a science magazine, professional journal, and a scientific journal. While the content is subject to peer review (and is counted as such in many university assessments of research output), the articles published are often summaries of research that may also be published elsewhere. Material published must be accessible and relevant to a broad readership. At the publisher's website, CACM is filed in the category "magazines".
Contents |
Influential articles
Many of the great debates and results in computing history have been published in the pages of CACM. Examples include:
- The issue of what to call the then-fledgling field of computer science was raised by the editors of DATA-LINK in a letter to the editor of CACM, appearing in 1958, the first year of CACM. They called for giving the field a name "which is brief, definite, distinctive"[1]. The call was echoed by a wide range of suggestions, including comptology (Quentin Correll)[2], hypology (P.A. Zaphyr) [3] and datalogy (Peter Naur)[4].
- C. A. R. Hoare's Quicksort ("Partition: Algorithm 63, Quicksort: Algorithm 64, and Find: Algorithm 65," CACM 4(7):321-322, 1961).
- Martin Davis, George Logemann and Donald Loveland described in 1962 the DPLL algorithm, containing the essential algorithm on which most modern SAT solvers are based ("A Machine Program for Theorem Proving", CACM 5(7):394-397).
- The "Revised report on the algorithm language ALGOL 60": A landmark paper in programming language design describing the result of the international ALGOL committee (CACM 6(1):1-17, January 1963).
- The issue of changing ACM's name, since the "machinery" in question is no longer the size of a house and is now measured in micrometres.[5][6][7]
- Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl's original paper on Simula-67 ("Simula: An ALGOL-based simulation language", CACM 9(9):671-678).
- Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous letter inveighing against the use of GOTO ("Go To statement considered harmful", CACM 11(3):147-148, March 1968). The original letter might be impossible (or difficult) to find on the web, but it was reprinted in Jan 2008 in the 60th anniversary edition of CACM[8].
- Dijkstra's original paper on the THE operating system. This paper's appendix, arguably even more influential than its main body, introduced semaphore-based synchronization ("Structure of the 'THE'-Multiprogramming System", CACM 11(5):341-346, May 1968).
- Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard M. Adleman's first public-key cryptosystem (RSA) ("A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems", CACM 21(2):120-126, February 1978).
References
- ^ CACM 1(4), p.6 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/368796.368802
- ^ CACM 1(7), p.2
- ^ CACM 2(1), p.4
- ^ CACM 9(7), p.485
- ^ Forsythe, George E. (1965), "President's letter to the ACM membership: why ACM?", CACM 8 (7): 422–426, doi:: “Will You Vote for An Association Name Change to ACIS?”.
- ^ McCracken, Daniel D. (1976), "A letter from the ACM Vice-President: the ACM name change", CACM 19 (10): 539, doi:. In this letter, McCracken suggests that the word “Machinery” is dropped from the name. To highlight the seriousness of the situation, he writes: “If we don't act sometime, we'll still be called Association for Computing Machinery in the year 2000.…”
- ^ Robert L. Ashenhurst, ed. (1986), "ACM forum", CACM 29 (4): 260–265, doi:. A letter by P.A.T. Wolfgang (“I thought that the name issue died in 1978”) and responses by R.L. Ashenhurst and R.F. Hespos.
- ^ Disjkstra, Edsger (originally published March 1968; re-published, January 2008). "(A Look Back at) Go To Statement Considered Harmful". Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM). http://mags.acm.org/communications/200801/?pg=9. Retrieved 2008-06-12.
See also
External links
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