Verification As a Matter Of Course
At the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) in Sierre last week, I gave a talk entitled “How you will be programming in 10 years”, describing a number of efforts by various people, with a special emphasis on our work at both ETH and Eiffel Software, which I think point to the future of software development. Several people have asked me for the slides, so I am making them available [1].
It occurred to me after the talk that the slogan “Verification As a Matter Of Course” (VAMOC) characterizes the general idea well. The world needs verified software, but the software development community is reluctant to use traditional heavy-duty verification techniques. While some of the excuses are unacceptable, others sources of resistance are justified and it is our job to make verification part of the very fabric of everyday software development.
My bet, and the basis of large part of both Eiffel and the ETH verification work, is that it is possible to bring verification to practicing developers as a natural, unobtrusive component of the software development process, through the tools they use.
The talk also broaches on concurrency, where many of the same ideas apply; CAMOC is the obvious next slogan.
Reference
[1] Slides of “How you will be programming in 10 years” talk (PDF).
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