Some Interdisciplinary Observations about Getting the "Right" Specification

• Authors: Cliff B. Jones
• Venue: Verified Software: Theories, Tools, Experiments
• Year: 2005

One can use formal approaches either post factoto try to show that a program has desirable properties or one can aim for verified by construction(VxC). The former approach tends to focus on specific properties such as avoiding the dereferencing of null pointers; the latter is more likely to address the question of whether the steps of design satisfy some overall specification. I not only prefer the latter but I have also argued that this is the main way to get formal methods to pay off: there is more mileage in getting a clean architecture than in trying to debug a bad design by retrofitting a proof.