The Case Against Formal Verification, 50 Years Later

(ivan-gavran.github.io)

11 points | by ghuntley 20 minutes ago

2 comments

  • bananaflag 3 minutes ago
    > Real-world systems are too messy to be specified

    I agree with this counterargument.

    I mean, you can verify that Euclid's argument computes the GCD. Or that quicksort produces a sorted version of the input array.

    But how do you verify Facebook? Facebook computes what?

    For some programs, the shortest descriptions of what they do are the programs themselves.

  • gr_norm 11 minutes ago
    The title may be slightly misleading if you haven't bothered to read the article. It's responding to a famous paper from 1979 critiquing formal verification. The article ends up disagreeing with most of its strongest claims in hindsight, though a couple appear to remain worthwhile.