14 ms·
That sounds (close to) impossible. How would you tell if a given piece of code sorts a list properly? There are a million and one sorting algorithms and the sta
by spicyj 16y ago
That sounds (close to) impossible. How would you tell if a given piece of code sorts a list properly? There are a million and one sorting algorithms and the static analyzer would have to be really smart to be able to check that reliably.
- atamyrat 16y agoYes, it is impossible. See: Halting problem.
- likpok 16y agoThe thing about program verification is that everyone knows that of course it is in general impossible. However, I am not writing a simulator. Most of the code I write does not actually take advantage of the power of a Turing machine. The fact that the general problem is impossible does not mean that the entire area of study is useless.
- riffraff 16y agosee: dependent typing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_type and restricted languages such as Spark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_(programming_language)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]