It seems that a lot of computer scientists and programmers assume that the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) is a mere publisher of computer science papers. They forget that the ACM hands out the Turing Award which has been awarded to several prominent computer scientists such as Alan J Perlis, Marvin Minsky, Edsger W Dijkstra, Donald E Knuth, and Barbara Liskov. When I subscribed as a professional, I gained access to the digital library which is rich with computer science papers which are sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical. The papers are found in the numerous transactions and journals that the ACM publishes, and the ACM hosts many conferences and sponsors some amazing events such as the ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) and they even sponsored the Deep Blue vs Kasparov chess game.

The price for a year's subscription was only $200 USD and for students the price is lower than that. Students should have access to the ACM Digital Library through their university so their subscription price is effectively $0 per year. It's incredible to think that so many papers are ignored and don't become popular because of a $200 paywall. $200 is seriously not much.

Sorry, this little post turned into a bit of cheerleading for the ACM but I think they don't get nearly enough credit and the amount of research that is out there that is ignored is shameful. Other fields routinely refer to research to implement it or to justify their actions, but computer programmers, software developers, web developers, etc. do not. When we do refer to things it's Wikipedia or a blog post or a book written by some random person who may or may not have done their research, in any case, they've had little peer-review and blog posts rarely include enough references or information to be useful.

Here's a listing of special interest groups that the ACM has:

• SIGACCESS: Accessible Computing
• SIGACT: Algorithms and Computation Theory
• SIGAda: Ada Programming Language
• SIGAPP: Applied Computing
• SIGARCH: Computer Architecture
• SIGART: Artificial Intelligence
• SIGBED: Embedded Systems
• SIGCAS: Computers and Society
• SIGCHI: Computer-Human Interaction
• SIGCOMM: Data Communication
• SIGCSE: Computer Science Education
• SIGDA: Design Automation
• SIGDOC: Design of Communication
• SIGecom: Electronic Commerce
• SIGEVO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
• SIGGRAPH: Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
• SIGIR: Information Retrieval
• SIGITE: Information Technology Education
• SIGKDD: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
• SIGMETRICS: Measurement and Evaluation
• SIGMICRO: Microarchitecture
• SIGMIS: Management Information Systems
• SIGMM: Multimedia
• SIGMOBILE: Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing
• SIGMOD: Management of Data
• SIGOPS: Operating Systems
• SIGPLAN: Programming Languages
• SIGSAC: Security, Audit, and Control
• SIGSAM: Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation
• SIGSIM: Simulation and Modeling
• SIGSOFT: Software Engineering
• SIGSPATIAL: Spatial Information
• SIGUCCS: University and College Computing Services
• SIGWEB: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

and here's how many conferences they host:

• CHI: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• CIKM: Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
• DAC: Design Automation Conference
• FCRC: Federated Computing Research Conference
• GECCO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
• SIGGRAPH: International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
• Hypertext: Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
• JCDL: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries
• OOPSLA: Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications
• WWW: World Wide Web Conference

You should really join the ACM if you haven't already. I'm not sure how else to convince other software developers to join the ACM. What are the reasons against joining? I can't think of any!