<p>I did a survey on Twitter about this a while back, results <a href="https://twitter.com/samth/status/355516642006011906">here</a>. A few of my favorites:</p>

<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/amal/papers/parpolyseal.pdf"><strong>Parametric Polymorphism through Runtime Sealing, or, Theorems for Low, Low Prices!</strong></a> by
Jacob Matthews and Amal Ahmed, ESOP 2008 <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78739-6_2">DOI:10.1007/978-3-540-78739-6_2</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/f-ing/"><strong>F-ing Modules</strong></a> by Andreas Rossberg, Claudio Russo, and Derek Dreyer, TLDI 2010</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.39.4206"><strong>Cons should not cons its arguments</strong></a> and <a href="http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/CheneyMTA.html"><strong>Cheney on the MTA</strong></a>, <em>both</em> by Henry Baker, SIGPLAN Notices 1992 and 1995. Baker has lots of other great paper titles, too.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~beyer/papers/matview_sigmod00.pdf"><strong>How to Roll a Join: Asynchronous Incremental View Maintenance</strong></a> by Salem, Beyer, and Lindsay, SIGMOD 2000 <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/342009.335393">DOI:10.1145/342009.335393</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~vouillon/publi/modalmodel.pdf"><strong>A Very Modal Model of a Modern, Major, General Type System</strong></a> by Appel, Mellies, Richards, and Vouillon, POPL 2007 <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1190216.1190235">DOI:10.1145/1190216.1190235</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://strictlypositive.org/CJ.pdf"><strong>Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right</strong></a>, Conor McBride, POPL 2008 <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1328438.1328474">DOI:10.1145/1328438.1328474</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.31.5002"><strong>Linear types can change the world!</strong></a>, Phil Wadler, Programming Concepts and Methods 1990 (note that the ! is signficant)</p></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T16:28:07.517Z
Pretty much any title by Philip Wadler is memorable. My favorites are his thesis, "Listlessness is Better than Laziness," and a POPL paper with Jeremy Siek, "Threesomes, With and Without Blame."
Huck Bennett
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T14:50:22.033Z
2014-10-22T19:07:35.460Z
2014-10-22T19:07:35.460Z
Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
<p>I used to like quirky titles when I started out in computer science but got bored eventually. Some authors manage to write titles that are clever, memorable and relevant but most attempts at funny titles results in unnecessarily long, uninformative and kludgy phrases that I find difficult to remember and look up. </p>

<p>There are papers like Pnueli's <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1382534" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Temporal Logic of Programs</a> from 1977, which is absolutely straightforward but easy for me to remember. I'm guessing you did not mean memorable in that sense. </p>

<p>Leslie Lamport has several papers with memorable titles that don't strike me as trying to be funny. Titles of the kind you want are numerous and I don't think it's feasible to have a remotely comprehensive list, even of papers I have read and remembered or even of those that are considered significant. Nonetheless, let me recall a few, grouping them where appropriate.</p>

<p><strong>The Writings of Leslie Lamport</strong></p>

<p>Lamport describes the story behind various papers <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>. He has many memorable titles, though not all titles (or the papers) have been well received.</p>

<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/time-clocks.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System</a>, Lamport, 1978, a classic paper in distributed systems. The title evokes images of the diagrams in the paper, themselves reminiscent of special relativity diagrams.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/sometime.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">'Sometime' is Sometimes 'Not Never'</a>, Lamport, 1980. Reading this I immediately work out the temporal logic theorems being hinted at.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/byz.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Byzantine Generals Problem</a>, Lamport, Pease, Shostak, 1982</p></li>
<li><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-ewd1013.txt" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"EWD 1013"</a>, 1988. Notable because only Dijkstra wrote EWDs.</li>
<li><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/automobile.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">How to Tell a Program from an Automobile</a>, 1996</li>
<li><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Part-Time Parliament</a>, Lamport, 1998. Better known as Paxos. See his page for the story of this paper and the algorithm it contains.</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Paper Title Considered Harmful</strong>
(thanks to @Bakuriu and @ Kaj_Sotala, whose comments got me to expand this point)</p>

<p>Edsger Dijkstra submitted <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1241518" rel="nofollow noreferrer">A Case Against the Goto statement</a> (also EWD 215) to the Communications of the ACM and the final title was modified by the editor Niklaus Wirth to the famous title given below. This title spawned a series of replies. Such titles already existed in journalism as pointed out in this <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004675.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Language log article</a>. In particular, recursive responses to "X considered harmful" with "`X considered harmful', considered harmful" can be found as early as the 1950s (<a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001086.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Language log</a>, <a href="http://q-pheevr.livejournal.com/11780.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">A Roguish Chrestomathy</a>). In this specific case, we got these titles.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=362929.362947" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Go to statement considered harmful</a>, 1968</li>
<li><p><a href="http://archive.rapidpacket.com/p261-knuth.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Structured Programming with go to Statements</a>, Knuth, 1974, which is a calmly written, beautiful article. He quotes Dijkstra's personal communication:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical
  about [the go to statement].  I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are
  making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could
  be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!" -- Edsger Dijkstra, 1973</p>
  
  <p>"At the IFIP Congress in 1971 I had the pleasure of meeting Dr.  Eiichi Goto of
  Japan, who cheerfully complained that he was always being eliminated." -- Knuth</p>
</blockquote></li>
<li><p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090320002214/http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/rubin87goto.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"Goto Considered Harmful" considered harmful</a>, Rubin, 1987</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=315742" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"""GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful?"</a>, a collection of responses from Moore, Musciano, Liebhaber, Lott and Starr published in 1987.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1009.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">On a somewhat disappointing correspondence</a>, Dijkstra, 1987, which ends with this:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Evidently, my priorities are not shared by everyone, for Rubin’s letter and most of the five reactions it evoked were conducted instead in terms of all sorts of “programming language features” that seem better ignored than exploited. The whole correspondence was carried out at a level that vividly reminded me of the intellectual climate of twenty years ago, as if stagnation were the major characteristic of the computing profession, and that was a disappointment. -- Dijkstra, 1987</p>
</blockquote></li>
</ul>

<p>There have been numerous "X considered harmful" titles since (see <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&amp;q=%22considered%20harmful%22&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0,5" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Google Scholar</a>).</p>

<p><strong>Logic, Programming Languages and Semantics</strong></p>

<p>These are various papers in logic and semantics with memorable titles. I'll expand on them as I find time.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=365257&amp;dl=ACM&amp;coll=DL&amp;CFID=445655585&amp;CFTOKEN=34780804" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The next 700 programming languages</a>, Landin, 1966</li>
<li><a href="http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0089911" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Scott is not always sober</a>, Johnstone, 1981</li>
<li><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/3-540-10843-2_22" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Impartiality, justice and fairness: The ethics of concurrent termination</a>, Lehmann, Pnueli, Stavi, 1981</li>
<li><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=77833" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Why people think computers can't</a>, Minsky, 1990</li>
<li><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=112600.112613" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The benefits of relaxing punctuality</a>, Alur, Feder, Henzinger, 1991</li>
<li><a href="http://wwwhome.ewi.utwente.nl/~fokkinga/mmf91m.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Functional Programming with Bananas, Lenses, Envelopes and Barbed Wire</a>, Meijer,  Fokkinga, Paterson, 1991</li>
<li><a href="http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/lics/1995/7050/00/70500025-abs.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Once and For All</a>, Kupferman and Pnueli, 1995</li>
<li><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=224168" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Once upon a type</a>, Turner, Wadler, Mossin, 1995</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cse.huji.ac.il/~ornak/publications/ictl97.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Synthesis with Incomplete Informatio</a>, Kupferman and Vardi, 1997 (notice missing 'n')</li>
<li><a href="http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/cps/bisim.ps" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Joys of Bisimulation</a>, Stirling, 1998</li>
<li><a href="http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0028745" rel="nofollow noreferrer">From pre-historic to post-modern symbolic model checking</a>, Henzinger, Kupferman, Qadeer, 1998</li>
<li><a href="http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/292540.292545" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Once Upon a Polymorphic Type</a>, Wansborough and Peyton Jones, 1999</li>
<li><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=503272.503279" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Lazy Abstraction</a>, Henzinger, Jhala, Majumdar, Sutre, 2002</li>
<li><a href="https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0198534256" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Sketches of an Elephant: A Topos Theory Compendiumm vol. 1</a>, Johnstone, 2002</li>
<li><a href="http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-45657-0_39#page-1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Vacuum Cleaning CTL Formulae</a>, Purandare and Somenzi, 2002</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cse.huji.ac.il/~ornak/publications/fossacs11b.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Co-Buching Them All</a>, Kupferman and Boker, 2011</li>
<li><a href="https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:582745/FULLTEXT01.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">All for the Price of Few</a>, Abdulla, Haziza, Holik, 2013</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-23T13:21:14.930Z
Since you mentioned "Go to statement considered harmful", one also needs to mention the [response](http://web.archive.org/web/20090320002214/http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/rubin87goto.pdf) ""GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful", and the collection of [counter-responses](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/1987/5/10097-acm-forum/abstract) posted under the title "'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?".
Kaj_Sotala
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-23T19:06:20.090Z
Since you mention the "Go to statement considered harmful" it should also be noted that Dijkstra did **not** choose that title. It was his editor that forcibly changed it (just read [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful)). The original title was: *A Case Against the Goto Statement*, which is much milder.
Bakuriu
CC BY-SA 4.0
2014-10-22T22:12:02.213Z
2018-12-01T14:25:56.753Z
2018-12-01T14:25:56.753Z
Vijay D
<p>Mihai Patrascu, and Liam Roditty. "Distance oracles beyond the Thorup-Zwick bound." Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2010 51st Annual IEEE Symposium on. IEEE, 2010.</p>

<p>"<strong>How to Grow Your Balls</strong>"  was the original title, though the authors was <a href="http://infoweekly.blogspot.co.at/2010/10/focs-2010.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">asked to changed</a> it. I read the paper and actually think that the old title really fits to how you think about the algorithm. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-23T06:39:44.300Z
2017-07-11T19:22:38.310Z
2017-07-11T19:22:38.310Z
Thatchaphol
<p>It's a recent paper, but its title often comes to my mind: </p>

<p>Giovanni Viglietta: <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4995"><strong>Gaming Is a Hard Job, but Someone Has to Do It!</strong></a> Theory Comput. Syst. 54(4): 595-621 (2014)</p>

<p>Viglietta presents some metatheorems that can be used to study the computational complexity of video games using common elements like destroyable paths, keys, doors, and so on; among the results, he applies those metatheorems to prove the NP-hardness of <a href="http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html">Pac-Man</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T12:47:30.843Z
2014-10-22T17:49:31.040Z
2014-10-22T17:49:31.040Z
Marzio De Biasi
<p>A title that is both memorable and descriptive is Mihai Patrascu's <a href="http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/FOCS.2008.83">Succincter</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T20:59:01.667Z
2014-10-22T20:59:01.667Z
Sasho Nikolov
<p><a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153.2456&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf"><strong>Secure Content Sniffing for Web Browsers, or How to Stop Papers from Reviewing Themselves</strong></a></p>

<p>Barth, A. ; UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA ; Caballero, J. ; Song, D. 2009 30th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SP.2009.3">DOI 10.1109/SP.2009.3</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T21:34:47.167Z
2014-10-22T21:34:47.167Z
Ángel
<p>Lane A. Hemaspandra and Heribert Vollmer. "<strong>The Satanic Notations: Counting Classes Beyond #P And Other Definitional Adventures.</strong>" Newsletter ACM SIGACT Volume 26 Issue 1, March 1995. Pages 2 - 13. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T19:56:11.593Z
2014-10-22T19:56:11.593Z
Tayfun Pay
<p>Cycle Killer...Qu'est-ce que c'est? On the Comparative Approximability of Hybridization Number and Directed Feedback Vertex Set - <a href="http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/120864350" rel="noreferrer">SIAM J. Discrete Math., 26(4)</a></p>

<p>(reference to Talking heads - Psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est))</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-23T06:43:19.567Z
2014-10-23T06:43:19.567Z
Olf
<p><a href="http://www.top-5000.nl/ps/Research%20re%20search%20&amp;%20re-search.pdf">Research, Re: Search &amp; Re-Search</a> by Aske Platt.  I ran across this paper when I was learning about AI search algorithms and the title always stuck with me.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-23T14:01:37.807Z
2014-10-23T14:01:37.807Z
Lucas
<p>"The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone: return-into-libc without function calls (on the x86)"</p>

<p>The reference is to Bob Dylan's song, "Tombstone Blues." It's about 64-bit buffer overflows, but it evokes images of cleaving innocent programs in two. So metal.</p>

<p><a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1315245.1315313" rel="noreferrer">https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1315245.1315313</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T17:41:33.863Z
2014-10-22T17:41:33.863Z
Ohnana
<p>I still like the classic "<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SFCS.1992.267789" rel="noreferrer">Mick Gets Some (the Odds Are on His Side)</a>"</p>

<p>And this: "<a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-45614-7_7" rel="noreferrer">Do Not Read This</a>"</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-28T15:31:03.400Z
2014-10-28T15:31:03.400Z
Jan Johannsen
<p><a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.51.4490" rel="nofollow">Don’t Stop the BIBOP: Flexible and Efficient Storage Management for Dynamically Typed Languages</a>, by R. Kent Dybvig, David Eby, and Carl Bruggeman</p>

<p><a href="http://www.cs.ru.nl/~james/RESEARCH/haskell2004.pdf" rel="nofollow">I am not a Number—I am a Free Variable</a>, by Conor McBride and James McKinna</p>

<p><a href="https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/neil.ghani/papers/ghani-tlca07.pdf" rel="nofollow">Initial Algebra Semantics is Enough!</a>, by Neil Ghani and Patricia Johann</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-30T02:44:24.397Z
2014-10-30T02:44:24.397Z
sclv
<p><a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.147.3013" rel="nofollow">It's Okay to Be Skinny, If Your Friends Are Fat</a>.</p>

<ul>
<li>Songrit Maneewongvatana , David M. Mount<br>
Venue: 4th Annual Workshop on Computational Geometry.</li>
</ul>

<p><a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-40002-8_18" rel="nofollow">How to keep a dead man from shooting.</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-28T11:39:37.210Z
2015-01-18T19:12:53.023Z
2015-01-18T19:12:53.023Z
R B
<p>Most of Conor McBride's paper titles are very memorable. I can say his paper titles are one reason I have read so many papers on dependent type theory. Some especially memorable ones are:</p>

<ul>
<li>"Do be do be do," S. Lindley, C. McBride &amp; C. McLaughlin, POPL 2017;</li>
<li>"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right (pearl): dissecting data structures," C. McBride, POPL 2008;</li>
<li>"The view from the left," C. McBride &amp; J. McKinna, JFP 14 (1) (2004);</li>
<li>"Elimination with a Motive," C. McBride, TYPES 2000.</li>
</ul>

<p>Many of the "functional pearl" published at ICFP and in JFP have interesting titles, in the very spirit of "functional pearls," which are to be instructive, concise and interesting to read. Towards this end, the authors work hard to come up with interesting titles. Some recent nominees:</p>

<ul>
<li>"What You Needa Know about Yoneda: Profunctor Optics and the Yoneda Lemma," G. Boisseau &amp; J. Gibbons, ICFP 2018;</li>
<li>"Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Contracts Be Misunderstood," C. Dimoulas, M. New, R. Findler &amp; M. Felleisen, ICFP 2016;</li>
<li>"Two Can Keep a Secret, If One of Them Uses Haskell," A. Russo, ICFP 2015.</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-12-04T00:10:54.200Z
2018-12-04T00:10:54.200Z
xrq
<p>J. van der Hoeven. <strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747717102905626" rel="nofollow">Relax, but don't be too lazy</a></strong>. J. Symb. Comput., 34:479–542, 2002.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-18T21:06:53.613Z
2015-01-18T21:06:53.613Z
Bruno
<p>From the math world, I have always thought <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220529151_On_starshaped_fuzzy_sets" rel="nofollow">On Starshaped Fuzzy Sets</a> is kind of adorable.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-24T00:36:55.500Z
2014-10-24T00:36:55.500Z
GMB
<p>"THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE" <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221327260_The_Magic_Words_are_Squeamish_Ossifrage" rel="nofollow noreferrer">link</a></p>

<p>Atkins, Graff, Lenstra, and Leyland describe the effort to factor Rivest's <span class="math-container">$129$</span>-digit number using early 90's computers with early 90's factoring algorithms while collaborating over the early 90's internet.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-04-01T12:08:31.817Z
2019-04-01T12:08:31.817Z
Mark S
<p>Following a <a href="https://mathoverflow.net/questions/44326/most-memorable-titles">fruitful question in MO</a>, I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss some notable paper names in CS.</p>

<p>It is quite clear that most of us might be attracted to read (or at least glance at) a paper with an interesting title (at least I do so every time I go over a list of papers in a conference), or avoid reading poorly named articles.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Which papers do you remember because of their titles (and, not-necessarily, the contents)?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>My favorite, while not a proper TCS paper, is <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2503808" rel="noreferrer">"The relational model is dead, SQL is dead, and I don’t feel so good myself."</a> .</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T11:32:44.537Z
Somehow related: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3111/funny-tcs-related-papers-etc
Jennifer Ng
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T18:00:49.923Z
The question on MO was closed long ago and this one should be, too. It's purely opinion-based and just a big list.
David Richerby
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T18:49:19.147Z
Well, as far as I can see, the question on MO was closed only after 9 months of activity because the big list was getting too big, diminishing the signal/noise ratio.
Emil Jeřábek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-22T21:01:24.437Z
I would not be too happy if this becomes a collection of silly puns or titles that are quotes only marginally related to the topic of the paper. IMO there should be some "quality" criterion, e.g. the title should actually have non-zero information content.
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-23T02:53:50.390Z
One of the answers on the mathoverflow site pointed to this link: http://www2.tcs.ifi.lmu.de/~jjohanns/cute.html, which is entitled **Here's a random list of papers in Theoretical Computer Science with cute titles.**
geometrian
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-28T15:33:37.953Z
Oh I didn't know this old page of mine was still reachable. 
I stopped maintaining and linking it years ago.
Jan Johannsen
<soft-question><big-list>
Most memorable CS paper titles
R B
# Most memorable CS paper titles

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-10-22)

Following a [fruitful question in MO](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/44326/most-memorable-titles), I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss some notable paper names in CS.

It is quite clear that most of us might be attracted to read (or at least glance at) a paper with an interesting title (at least I do so every time I go over a list of papers in a conference), or avoid reading poorly named articles.

> Which papers do you remember because of their titles (and, not-necessarily, the contents)?

My favorite, while not a proper TCS paper, is ["The relational model is dead, SQL is dead, and I don’t feel so good myself."](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2503808) .

**Tags:** soft-question, big-list
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Somehow related: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/3111/funny-tcs-related-papers-etc  
> **username_2**: The question on MO was closed long ago and this one should be, too. It's purely opinion-based and just a big list.  
> **username_3**: Well, as far as I can see, the question on MO was closed only after 9 months of activity because the big list was getting too big, diminishing the signal/noise ratio.  
> **username_4**: I would not be too happy if this becomes a collection of silly puns or titles that are quotes only marginally related to the topic of the paper. IMO there should be some "quality" criterion, e.g. the title should actually have non-zero information content.  
> **username_5**: One of the answers on the mathoverflow site pointed to this link: http://www2.tcs.ifi.lmu.de/~jjohanns/cute.html, which is entitled **Here's a random list of papers in Theoretical Computer Science with cute titles.**  
> **username_6**: Oh I didn't know this old page of mine was still reachable.  I stopped maintaining and linking it years ago.  

---

## 17 answers

### Answer by username_7 on 2014-10-22. Score: 37

I did a survey on Twitter about this a while back, results [here](https://twitter.com/samth/status/355516642006011906). A few of my favorites:

* [**Parametric Polymorphism through Runtime Sealing, or, Theorems for Low, Low Prices!**](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/amal/papers/parpolyseal.pdf) by
  Jacob Matthews and Amal Ahmed, ESOP 2008 [DOI:10.1007/978-3-540-78739-6\_2](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78739-6_2)
* [**F-ing Modules**](http://www.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/f-ing/) by Andreas Rossberg, Claudio Russo, and Derek Dreyer, TLDI 2010
* [**Cons should not cons its arguments**](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.39.4206) and [**Cheney on the MTA**](http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/CheneyMTA.html), *both* by Henry Baker, SIGPLAN Notices 1992 and 1995. Baker has lots of other great paper titles, too.
* [**How to Roll a Join: Asynchronous Incremental View Maintenance**](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~beyer/papers/matview_sigmod00.pdf) by Salem, Beyer, and Lindsay, SIGMOD 2000 [DOI:10.1145/342009.335393](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/342009.335393)
* [**A Very Modal Model of a Modern, Major, General Type System**](http://www.pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr/~vouillon/publi/modalmodel.pdf) by Appel, Mellies, Richards, and Vouillon, POPL 2007 [DOI:10.1145/1190216.1190235](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1190216.1190235)
* [**Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right**](http://strictlypositive.org/CJ.pdf), Conor McBride, POPL 2008 [DOI:10.1145/1328438.1328474](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1328438.1328474)
* [**Linear types can change the world!**](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.31.5002), Phil Wadler, Programming Concepts and Methods 1990 (note that the ! is signficant)

> **Comments:**
> **username_8**: Pretty much any title by Philip Wadler is memorable. My favorites are his thesis, "Listlessness is Better than Laziness," and a POPL paper with Jeremy Siek, "Threesomes, With and Without Blame."  

---

### Answer by username_9 on 2014-10-22. Score: 30

I used to like quirky titles when I started out in computer science but got bored eventually. Some authors manage to write titles that are clever, memorable and relevant but most attempts at funny titles results in unnecessarily long, uninformative and kludgy phrases that I find difficult to remember and look up.

There are papers like Pnueli's [The Temporal Logic of Programs](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1382534) from 1977, which is absolutely straightforward but easy for me to remember. I'm guessing you did not mean memorable in that sense.

Leslie Lamport has several papers with memorable titles that don't strike me as trying to be funny. Titles of the kind you want are numerous and I don't think it's feasible to have a remotely comprehensive list, even of papers I have read and remembered or even of those that are considered significant. Nonetheless, let me recall a few, grouping them where appropriate.

**The Writings of Leslie Lamport**

Lamport describes the story behind various papers [here](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html). He has many memorable titles, though not all titles (or the papers) have been well received.

* [Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/time-clocks.pdf), Lamport, 1978, a classic paper in distributed systems. The title evokes images of the diagrams in the paper, themselves reminiscent of special relativity diagrams.
* ['Sometime' is Sometimes 'Not Never'](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/sometime.pdf), Lamport, 1980. Reading this I immediately work out the temporal logic theorems being hinted at.
* [The Byzantine Generals Problem](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/byz.pdf), Lamport, Pease, Shostak, 1982
* ["EWD 1013"](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-ewd1013.txt), 1988. Notable because only Dijkstra wrote EWDs.
* [How to Tell a Program from an Automobile](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/automobile.pdf), 1996
* [The Part-Time Parliament](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf), Lamport, 1998. Better known as Paxos. See his page for the story of this paper and the algorithm it contains.

**Paper Title Considered Harmful**
(thanks to @Bakuriu and @ Kaj\_Sotala, whose comments got me to expand this point)

Edsger Dijkstra submitted [A Case Against the Goto statement](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1241518) (also EWD 215) to the Communications of the ACM and the final title was modified by the editor Niklaus Wirth to the famous title given below. This title spawned a series of replies. Such titles already existed in journalism as pointed out in this [Language log article](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004675.html). In particular, recursive responses to "X considered harmful" with "`X considered harmful', considered harmful" can be found as early as the 1950s ([Language log](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001086.html), [A Roguish Chrestomathy](http://q-pheevr.livejournal.com/11780.html)). In this specific case, we got these titles.

* [Go to statement considered harmful](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=362929.362947), 1968
* [Structured Programming with go to Statements](http://archive.rapidpacket.com/p261-knuth.pdf), Knuth, 1974, which is a calmly written, beautiful article. He quotes Dijkstra's personal communication:

  > "Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical
  > about [the go to statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are
  > making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could
  > be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!" -- Edsger Dijkstra, 1973
  >
  > "At the IFIP Congress in 1971 I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Eiichi Goto of
  > Japan, who cheerfully complained that he was always being eliminated." -- Knuth
* ["Goto Considered Harmful" considered harmful](http://web.archive.org/web/20090320002214/http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/rubin87goto.pdf), Rubin, 1987
* ["""GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful?"](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=315742), a collection of responses from Moore, Musciano, Liebhaber, Lott and Starr published in 1987.
* [On a somewhat disappointing correspondence](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1009.html), Dijkstra, 1987, which ends with this:

  > Evidently, my priorities are not shared by everyone, for Rubin’s letter and most of the five reactions it evoked were conducted instead in terms of all sorts of “programming language features” that seem better ignored than exploited. The whole correspondence was carried out at a level that vividly reminded me of the intellectual climate of twenty years ago, as if stagnation were the major characteristic of the computing profession, and that was a disappointment. -- Dijkstra, 1987

There have been numerous "X considered harmful" titles since (see [Google Scholar](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&q=%22considered%20harmful%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5)).

**Logic, Programming Languages and Semantics**

These are various papers in logic and semantics with memorable titles. I'll expand on them as I find time.

* [The next 700 programming languages](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=365257&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID=445655585&CFTOKEN=34780804), Landin, 1966
* [Scott is not always sober](http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0089911), Johnstone, 1981
* [Impartiality, justice and fairness: The ethics of concurrent termination](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/3-540-10843-2_22), Lehmann, Pnueli, Stavi, 1981
* [Why people think computers can't](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=77833), Minsky, 1990
* [The benefits of relaxing punctuality](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=112600.112613), Alur, Feder, Henzinger, 1991
* [Functional Programming with Bananas, Lenses, Envelopes and Barbed Wire](http://wwwhome.ewi.utwente.nl/~fokkinga/mmf91m.pdf), Meijer, Fokkinga, Paterson, 1991
* [Once and For All](http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/lics/1995/7050/00/70500025-abs.html), Kupferman and Pnueli, 1995
* [Once upon a type](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=224168), Turner, Wadler, Mossin, 1995
* [Synthesis with Incomplete Informatio](http://www.cse.huji.ac.il/~ornak/publications/ictl97.pdf), Kupferman and Vardi, 1997 (notice missing 'n')
* [The Joys of Bisimulation](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/cps/bisim.ps), Stirling, 1998
* [From pre-historic to post-modern symbolic model checking](http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2FBFb0028745), Henzinger, Kupferman, Qadeer, 1998
* [Once Upon a Polymorphic Type](http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/292540.292545), Wansborough and Peyton Jones, 1999
* [Lazy Abstraction](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=503272.503279), Henzinger, Jhala, Majumdar, Sutre, 2002
* [Sketches of an Elephant: A Topos Theory Compendiumm vol. 1](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0198534256), Johnstone, 2002
* [Vacuum Cleaning CTL Formulae](http://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-45657-0_39#page-1), Purandare and Somenzi, 2002
* [Co-Buching Them All](http://www.cse.huji.ac.il/~ornak/publications/fossacs11b.pdf), Kupferman and Boker, 2011
* [All for the Price of Few](https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:582745/FULLTEXT01.pdf), Abdulla, Haziza, Holik, 2013

> **Comments:**
> **username_10**: Since you mentioned "Go to statement considered harmful", one also needs to mention the [response](http://web.archive.org/web/20090320002214/http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/rubin87goto.pdf) ""GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful", and the collection of [counter-responses](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/1987/5/10097-acm-forum/abstract) posted under the title "'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?".  
> **username_11**: Since you mention the "Go to statement considered harmful" it should also be noted that Dijkstra did **not** choose that title. It was his editor that forcibly changed it (just read [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful)). The original title was: *A Case Against the Goto Statement*, which is much milder.  

---

### Answer by username_12 on 2014-10-23. Score: 13

Mihai Patrascu, and Liam Roditty. "Distance oracles beyond the Thorup-Zwick bound." Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2010 51st Annual IEEE Symposium on. IEEE, 2010.

"**How to Grow Your Balls**" was the original title, though the authors was [asked to changed](http://infoweekly.blogspot.co.at/2010/10/focs-2010.html) it. I read the paper and actually think that the old title really fits to how you think about the algorithm.


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### Answer by username_13 on 2014-10-22. Score: 11

It's a recent paper, but its title often comes to my mind:

Giovanni Viglietta: [**Gaming Is a Hard Job, but Someone Has to Do It!**](http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4995) Theory Comput. Syst. 54(4): 595-621 (2014)

Viglietta presents some metatheorems that can be used to study the computational complexity of video games using common elements like destroyable paths, keys, doors, and so on; among the results, he applies those metatheorems to prove the NP-hardness of [Pac-Man](http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html).


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### Answer by username_4 on 2014-10-22. Score: 10

A title that is both memorable and descriptive is Mihai Patrascu's [Succincter](http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/FOCS.2008.83).


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### Answer by username_14 on 2014-10-22. Score: 10

[**Secure Content Sniffing for Web Browsers, or How to Stop Papers from Reviewing Themselves**](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153.2456&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Barth, A. ; UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA ; Caballero, J. ; Song, D. 2009 30th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. [DOI 10.1109/SP.2009.3](http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SP.2009.3)


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### Answer by username_15 on 2014-10-22. Score: 8

Lane A. Hemaspandra and Heribert Vollmer. "**The Satanic Notations: Counting Classes Beyond #P And Other Definitional Adventures.**" Newsletter ACM SIGACT Volume 26 Issue 1, March 1995. Pages 2 - 13.


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### Answer by username_16 on 2014-10-23. Score: 7

Cycle Killer...Qu'est-ce que c'est? On the Comparative Approximability of Hybridization Number and Directed Feedback Vertex Set - [SIAM J. Discrete Math., 26(4)](http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/120864350)

(reference to Talking heads - Psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est))


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### Answer by username_17 on 2014-10-23. Score: 7

[Research, Re: Search & Re-Search](http://www.top-5000.nl/ps/Research%20re%20search%20&%20re-search.pdf) by Aske Platt. I ran across this paper when I was learning about AI search algorithms and the title always stuck with me.


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### Answer by username_18 on 2014-10-22. Score: 5

"The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone: return-into-libc without function calls (on the x86)"

The reference is to Bob Dylan's song, "Tombstone Blues." It's about 64-bit buffer overflows, but it evokes images of cleaving innocent programs in two. So metal.

<https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1315245.1315313>


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### Answer by username_6 on 2014-10-28. Score: 5

I still like the classic "[Mick Gets Some (the Odds Are on His Side)](http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SFCS.1992.267789)"

And this: "[Do Not Read This](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-45614-7_7)"


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### Answer by username_20 on 2018-12-04. Score: 5

Most of Conor McBride's paper titles are very memorable. I can say his paper titles are one reason I have read so many papers on dependent type theory. Some especially memorable ones are:

* "Do be do be do," S. Lindley, C. McBride & C. McLaughlin, POPL 2017;
* "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right (pearl): dissecting data structures," C. McBride, POPL 2008;
* "The view from the left," C. McBride & J. McKinna, JFP 14 (1) (2004);
* "Elimination with a Motive," C. McBride, TYPES 2000.

Many of the "functional pearl" published at ICFP and in JFP have interesting titles, in the very spirit of "functional pearls," which are to be instructive, concise and interesting to read. Towards this end, the authors work hard to come up with interesting titles. Some recent nominees:

* "What You Needa Know about Yoneda: Profunctor Optics and the Yoneda Lemma," G. Boisseau & J. Gibbons, ICFP 2018;
* "Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Contracts Be Misunderstood," C. Dimoulas, M. New, R. Findler & M. Felleisen, ICFP 2016;
* "Two Can Keep a Secret, If One of Them Uses Haskell," A. Russo, ICFP 2015.


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### Answer by username_19 on 2014-10-30. Score: 4

[Don’t Stop the BIBOP: Flexible and Efficient Storage Management for Dynamically Typed Languages](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.51.4490), by R. Kent Dybvig, David Eby, and Carl Bruggeman

[I am not a Number—I am a Free Variable](http://www.cs.ru.nl/~james/RESEARCH/haskell2004.pdf), by Conor McBride and James McKinna

[Initial Algebra Semantics is Enough!](https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/neil.ghani/papers/ghani-tlca07.pdf), by Neil Ghani and Patricia Johann


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### Answer by username_0 on 2014-10-28. Score: 4

[It's Okay to Be Skinny, If Your Friends Are Fat](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.147.3013).

* Songrit Maneewongvatana , David M. Mount  
  Venue: 4th Annual Workshop on Computational Geometry.

[How to keep a dead man from shooting.](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-40002-8_18)


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### Answer by username_21 on 2015-01-18. Score: 3

J. van der Hoeven. **[Relax, but don't be too lazy](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747717102905626)**. J. Symb. Comput., 34:479–542, 2002.


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### Answer by username_22 on 2014-10-24. Score: 3

From the math world, I have always thought [On Starshaped Fuzzy Sets](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/220529151_On_starshaped_fuzzy_sets) is kind of adorable.


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### Answer by username_23 on 2019-04-01. Score: 1

"THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE" [link](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221327260_The_Magic_Words_are_Squeamish_Ossifrage)

Atkins, Graff, Lenstra, and Leyland describe the effort to factor Rivest's $129$-digit number using early 90's computers with early 90's factoring algorithms while collaborating over the early 90's internet.


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