Program Verification: Fundamental Issues in Computer Science

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Among the most important problems confronting computer science is that of developing a paradigm appropriate to the discipline. Proponents of formal methods - such as John McCarthy, C.A.R. Hoare and Edgar Dijkstra - have advanced the position that computing is a mathematical activity and that computer science should model itself after mathematics. Opponents of formal methods - such as Richard DeMillo, Richard Lipton and Alan Perlis - by contrast, suggest that programming is the activity which is fundamental to computer science and that there are important differences that distinguish it from mathematics, which therefore cannot provide a suitable paradigm. Disagreement over the place of formal methods in computer science has recently arisen in the form of renewed interest in the nature and capacity of programme verification as a method for establishing the reliability of software systems. A paper that appeared in Communications of the ACM, entitled Programme Verification: The Very Idea , by James H. Fetzer, triggered an extended debate that has been discussed in several journals and that has endured for several years, engaging the interest of computer scientists (both theoretical and applied) and of other thinkers from a wide range of backgrounds who want to understand computer science as a domain of inquiry.