"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisp...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.50.1280425209.13841.digitalmar...@puremagic.com...
On Thursday, July 29, 2010 03:11:21 Don wrote:
I have to disagree with that. "Correctness proofs" are based on a total
fallacy. Attempting to proving that a program is correct (on a real
machine, as opposed to a theoretical one) is utterly ridiculous.
I'm genuinely astonished that such an absurd idea ever had any traction.
It's likely because the idea of being able to _prove_ that your program is
correct is rather seductive. As it is, you never know for sure whether you
found
all of the bugs or not. So, I think that it's quite understandable that
the
academic types at the least have been interested in it. I'd also have
expected
folks like Boeing to have some interest in it. However, since it's so time
consuming, error prone, and ultimately not enough even if you do it right,
it
just doesn't make sense to do it in most cases, and it's never a good idea
to
rely on it.
Given how computer science is effectively applied mathematics, I don't
think that
it's at all surprising or ridiculous that correctness proofs have been
tried (if
anything, it would be totally natural and obvious to a lot of math folks),
but I
do think that that it's fairly clear that they aren't really a solution
for a
whole host of reasons.
- Jonathan M Davis
You've snipped the context; if you go back and look at what Don was
disagreeing with, it was simply that correctness proofs are *one tool among
many* for increasing program reliability -- no one claimed that they are "a
solution". The claim that they are "based on a total fallacy" is a grossly
ignorant.
