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Researchers all over the world collectively publish thousands of articles on software development topics every year, hoping to benefit practical software development in the long run. (Of course, some of them only publish to increase their publication count, but hopefully most still aim to advance the field.) But what is really useful for practical software development?

Of all the research articles you have read, what do you consider being the most important one for the software development field?

What is it about that article that makes it stand out as especially important in your view?

Note: I deliberately chose the term "software development", but you can freely interpret it as "programming" or "software engineering", or anything else that fits into the "software development" category.

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This question is not suitable for the Q&A format, as it cannot be definitively answered (everyone will respond with their favorite). In addition, it is too broad; software development is a very large field. – Robert Harvey Dec 5 '12 at 6:46
This is a "bad subjective" question‌​, and although extremely interesting, it's not really a good fit for the site and I'm afraid I'll have to close it. Feel free to ask on our Meta site for a more thorough explanation on why we avoid such questions. As for an answer, I think likely candidates are Alan Turing's "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" and Alonzo Church's "A Note on the Entscheidungsproblem". – Yannis Rizos♦ Dec 5 '12 at 6:46

closed as not constructive by Robert Harvey, Yannis Rizos♦ Dec 5 '12 at 6:46

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