Links

Open Access Publications

• ACM SIGPLAN OpenTOC
• ACM SIGSOFT OpenTOC

Writing

• "How to Write a Great Research Paper" by Simon Peyton Jones. Essential watching for writing research papers.

• "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell. A critique of propaganda, it also illustrates the difference between clear, simple, honest language vs abstruse, over-wrought, abstract language. The latter style makes it hard to understand the writer's true meaning, either intentionally (propaganda) or not (poor writing).

• "Error Codes for Paper Introductions" by Chris Parnin.

• "Writing Beyond the Academy" by Larry McEnerney.

Reading

• "Papers" (Slide 10) by Robert Grimm. (1) What is the problem and why does it matter? (2) What is the solution and how is it new/different? (3) What are the contributions and limitations?

• "Research papers and review considerations" by David Wetherall.

• "Writing (and Reading) Papers by Armando Fox.

• "How to Read a Technical Paper", by Jason Eisner.

• "How to read a research paper" by Michael Mitzenmacher.

• "Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology" by Henning Schulzrinne.

Presenting

• "How to Give a Great Research Talk" (2016) (2014) by Simon Peyton Jones. Excellent advice on what makes a great talk, delivering the key insight, limiting complexity, focusing on the audience, developing motivation, flow, etc.

• "Oral Presentation Advice" by Mark D. Hill and "How to Give a Bad Talk" by David A. Patterson

• "Even a Geek Can Speak: Low-Tech Presentation Skills for High-Tech People" by Joey Asher. Great book, found via Matt Might's academic presentation tips

• "(An Opinionated Talk) On Preparing Good Talks" by Ranjit Jhala.

• "How to Write a Conference Talk" by Michael Hicks.

Doing Research

• How to Have a Bad Career by David Patterson.

• "So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!" by Ronald T. Azuma. Very useful guide to all aspects of pursuing a PhD.

• Systems Benchmarking Crimes by Gernot Heiser.

• "What is PL research and how is it useful?" (Video) by Michael Hicks.

• "You and Your Research", Richard Hamming Video Transcript. Classic advice on conducting research.

• "Technology and Courage", Ivan Sutherland

• "Mapping out a Research Agenda", Barbara Ryder

Programming

• "The Elements of Programming Style" by Kernighan and Plauger

• "Three Virtues of a Great Programmer": Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris

• "Google Engineering Practices Documentation"

Time Management and Organization

• "Time Management" by Randy Pausch.

• "6 Blog Tips for Busy Academics" by Matt Might.

• "Writing a progress/status report" by Michael Ernst.

Tutorials

Command-Line

• OverTheWire: Wargames.
• The Command Line! from Ryans Tutorials.

Automated Reasoning

• Solving the eight-queens problem using logic (from a coursera course on automated reasoning).
• Guide to the Z3 Python API by ericpony.

Miscellaneous Software

• Courgette: A compression algorithm for object files that makes Chromium's updates smaller. During my internship at Google I contributed to Courgette, adding support for ELF binaries and the ARM instruction set, and documented its internals.
• GraphicML: An intermediate language for data charting. I developed this while working at Educational Testing Service.
• timesheet: A painless command-line time tracker I created during graduate school to see in detail what I was spending (and not spending) time on.
• podcasts: Scripts to download podcasts from the command-line or via a cronjob.