Software engineering
Domain Theory: precedents
Both Gary Leavens and Jim Horning commented (partly here, partly on Facebook) about my Domain Theory article [1] to mention that Larch had mechanisms for domain modeling and specification reuse. As Horning writes: The Larch Shared Language was really all about creating reusable domain theories, including theorems about the domains. See, for example [2] and … Read more
Domain Theory: the forgotten step in program verification
Program verification is making considerable progress but is hampered by a lack of abstraction in specifications. A crucial step is, almost always, absent from the process; this omission is the principal obstacle to making verification a standard component of everyday software development. 1. Steps in software verification In the first few minutes of any … Read more
Aliasing and framing: Saint Petersburg seminar next week
In last Thursday’s session of the seminar, Kokichi Futatsugi’s talk took longer than planned (and it would have been a pity to stop him), so I postponed my own talk on Automatic inference of frame conditions through the alias calculus to next week (Thursday local date). As usual it will be broadcast live. Seminar page: here, … Read more
A carefully designed Result
In the Eiffel user discussion group [1], Ian Joyner recently asked: A lot of people are now using Result as a variable name for the return value in many languages. I believe this first came from Eiffel, but can’t find proof. Or was it adopted from an earlier language? Proof I cannot offer, but … Read more
New LASER proceedings
Springer has just published in the tutorial sub-series of Lecture Notes in Computer Science a new proceedings volume for the LASER summer school [1]. The five chapters are notes from the 2008, 2009 and 2010 schools (a previous volume [2] covered earlier schools). The themes range over search-based software engineering (Mark Harman and colleagues), replication … Read more
R&D positions in software engineering
In the past couple of weeks, three colleagues separately sent me announcements of PhD and postdoc positions, asking me to circulate them. This blog is as good a place as any other (as a matter of fact when I asked Oge de Moor if it was appropriate he replied: “Readers of your blog are just … Read more