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Gvaerg comments on Open Thread, December 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: ChrisHallquist 03 December 2013 05:10AM

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Comment author: Gvaerg 03 December 2013 09:04:13PM 1 point [-]

I did some Googling after reading the article and found this book by Dijkstra and Scholten actually showing how a first-order language could be adapted to yield easy and teachable corectness proofs. That is actually amazing! I have a degree in CS and unfortunately I've never seen a formal specification system that could actually be implemented and not be just some almost-tautological mathematical logic, like so many systems that exist in the academia. Thanks very much for the link.

Comment author: Pfft 04 December 2013 06:17:20AM 3 points [-]

If you are interested in this kind of thing, you should check out Dafny. It's a programming language with Hoare-logic style pre- and postconditions (and the underlying implementation computes weakest preconditions, Dijkstra-style). But what sets it apart is that it is backed by an automatic theorem prover (Z3) which is sufficiently powerful to handle most things that seem trivial to a human. To me Dafny feels like the promise of programming verification research in the 1970s finally came through: you can carry out program verification like you would with pen and paper, without being overwhelmed by finicky algebraic manipulations.