I find this paper a rather useful antidote to Dijkstra's propaganda of formal methods, and I am puzzled why it does not get (re)published on HN nearly as often as Dijkstra's essay. I believe it deserves a wider audience.
I'm not aware of any real world success story for formal methods in the 30 years since this paper was published to make me doubt its conclusions.
Comments
I find this paper a rather useful antidote to Dijkstra's propaganda of formal methods, and I am puzzled why it does not get (re)published on HN nearly as often as Dijkstra's essay. I believe it deserves a wider audience.
I'm not aware of any real world success story for formal methods in the 30 years since this paper was published to make me doubt its conclusions.
Dijkstra's response: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD638....