Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
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
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
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
The Saint Petersburg software engineering seminar has two sessions today (29 March 2012, 18 local time, see here for the date and time in your area), broadcast live: By Kokichi Futatsugi from KAIST (Japan): Combining Inference and Search in Verification with CafeOBJ. By me: Automatic inference of frame conditions through the alias calculus. See details … Read more
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
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
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