Precedent
Alexander Kogtenkov pointed out to me that precursor work to my papers on the Alias Calculus [1] [2] had been published by John Whaley and Martin Rinard [3]. There are some significant differences; in particular my rules are simpler, and their work is not explicitly presented as a calculus. But many of the basic ideas are the same. The reason I did not cite that paper is simply that I was not aware of it; I am happy to correct the omission.
References
[1] Bertrand Meyer: Towards a Theory and Calculus of Aliasing, in Journal of Object Technology, vol. 9, no. 2, March-April 2010, pages 37-74, available here (superseded by [2])
[2] Bertrand Meyer: Steps Towards a Theory and Calculus of Aliasing, in International Journal of Software and Informatics, 2011, available here (revised and improved version of [1].)
[3] John Whaley and Martin Rinard: Compositional Pointer and Escape Analysis for Java Programs, in POPL 1999, available here.
Eiffel Software
Home page at ETH
Informatics Europe
LASER summer school
Propulsion Academy
I have trouble with the use of strict scientific criteria in judging what is a human practice (relying on science whenever possible but not always). Heuristics, experience, inferences based on incomplete information, inability to translate natural language semantics into formally defined models, etc. – this is all characteristic of software engineering. The situation reminds me of medicine where science is used in a broad and disciplined way, however, its practice relies on subjective experience (hunches), incomplete and imprecise information about patients, diseases, drug interaction, etc.