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Dijkstra spent a lot of his research effort on ways to prove that programs are correct. "Today a usual technique is to make a program and then to test it. But:
by rnprince 9y ago
Dijkstra spent a lot of his research effort on ways to prove that programs are correct.
"Today a usual technique is to make a program and then to test it. But: program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but it is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence. The only effective way to raise the confidence level of a program significantly is to give a convincing proof of its correctness."
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340.PDF https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd03xx/EWD340.PDF
- euske 9y ago"I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist." - Dijkstra
- sjg007 9y agoThis basically describes the dichotomy between CS and software engineering.
- Stratoscope 9y agoThere is great wisdom in that observation, but I also enjoyed Knuth's take on the matter: "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.html