Grand Challenges for Computing

The British Computer Society published a list of grand challenges for computing. Unfortunately, for many of them it will be hard to tell when we've accomplished the challenge.

Toward concurrency in software

The Free Lunch is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software describes why we are unlikely to see higher clockspeeds and other simple scaling soon, so that performance increases in software will have to come from concurrency to exploit multicore processors, with a bit of assist from larger caches. 64-bit processors may actually decrease application performance.

Joel on Software: "Advice for Computer Science College Students"

Joel Spolsky provides some Advice for Computer Science College Students, including

• Learn how to write before graduating.
• Learn C before graduating.
• Learn microeconomics before graduating.
• Don't blow off non-CS classes just because they're boring.
• Take programming-intensive courses.
• Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
• No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.