Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science (2009)

Re:Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science (2009) by rnprince on Monday August 07, 2017 @12:17AM (#14945275)

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

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Re:Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science (2009) by Stratoscope on Monday August 07, 2017 @03:04AM (#14945820)

There 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

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Re:Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science (2009) by euske on Monday August 07, 2017 @01:22AM (#14945486)

"I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist." - Dijkstra

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Re:Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science (2009) by sjg007 on Monday August 07, 2017 @09:56AM (#14947438)

This basically describes the dichotomy between CS and software engineering.

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