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Social processes and proofs of theorems and programs

Authors:

Richard A. De Millo,

Richard J. Lipton, and

Alan J. PerlisAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 22, Issue 5

Pages 271 - 280

https://doi.org/10.1145/359104.359106

Published: 01 May 1979 Publication History

Abstract

It is argued that formal verifications of programs, no matter how obtained, will not play the same key role in the development of computer science and software engineering as proofs do in mathematics. Furthermore the absence of continuity, the inevitability of change, and the complexity of specification of significantly many real programs make the formal verification process difficult to justify and manage. It is felt that ease of formal verification should not dominate program language design.

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Cited By

Quaresma PGraziani PNicoletti S(2024)Considerations on Approaches and Metrics in Automated Theorem Generation/Finding in GeometryElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.398.12398(85-100)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2024
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Published In

cover image Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM Volume 22, Issue 5

May 1979

43 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/359104

Editor:
Robert L. Ashenhurst
Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1979 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 May 1979

Published in CACM Volume 22, Issue 5

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.398.12
de Miguel JVelázquez-Iturbide J(2024)What Is an Algorithm?Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Sixth Edition10.4018/978-1-6684-7366-5.ch072(1-17)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-7366-5.ch072
Greiffenhagen C(2023)Checking correctness in mathematical peer reviewSocial Studies of Science10.1177/0306312723120027454:2(184-209)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127231200274
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