Program verification: the very idea

  • Authors:
  • James H. Fetzer

  • Affiliations:
  • Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth, MN

  • Venue:
  • Communications of the ACM
  • Year:
  • 1988

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Abstract

The notion of program verification appears to trade upon an equivocation. Algorithms, as logical structures, are appropriate subjects for deductive verification. Programs, as causal models of those structures, are not. The success of program verification as a generally applicable and completely reliable method for guaranteeing program performance is not even a theoretical possibility.