Influential computer science papers

I run into this question on Hacker News, asking for the best computer science papers. There are a few that I keep getting back to, either because they are so fundamental or they are so useful.

Without any particular order

• The Raft Paper – a distributed consensus algorithm that made sense to me on first read. There are a lot of subtle issues to consider, but when reading the paper, everything clicked. That is head and shoulders above what Paxos literature is about.
• The Ubiquitous BTree – talk about a paper that I used daily. Admittedly, I didn’t get started on BTrees from this paper, but this is a very well written one and it does a great job presenting the topic. It is also from 1979, and BTree were already “ubiquitous” at that time, which tells us something.
• Extendible Hashing – this is also from 1979, and it is well written. I implemented extendible hashing based on this article directly and I grokked it right away.
• How Complex Systems Fail – not strictly a computer science paper. In fact, I’m fairly certain that this fits more into civil engineering, but it does an amazing job of explaining the internals of complex systems and the why and how they fail. I took a lot from this paper. It is also very short and highly readable.
• OLTP Through the Looking Glass – discuss the internal structure of database engines and the cost and complexities of their various pieces.
• You’re doing it wrong – discuss the implementation of Varnish proxy from the point of view of a kernel hacker. Totally different approach to the design of the system. Had a lot of influence on how I build systems.

I’m fairly certain that my criteria won’t be yours, but those are all papers that I have read multiple times and have utilized their insights in my daily work.