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Re:Formal methods: Just good engineering practice? by RaxcN on Monday June 24, 2024 @05:30AM (#40773993)
The visible "productivity" as in manager friendly LOC. The actual productivity goes up.

Managers don't want that though, for reasons that already Dijkstra has outlined.

Re:Formal methods: Just good engineering practice? by xavxav on Monday June 24, 2024 @05:49AM (#40774097)
I'm a researcher in formal verification; my thesis was building a tool to do this kind of stuff and I agree with the grandparent (though I would say probably closer to 5-10x slowdown not 100x).

Proofs are hard and often not for interesting reasons; its stuff like proving that you won't overflow a 2^64 counter which you only increment (aka something which won't happen for another couple billion years).

Current tools are only useful for specific kinds of problems in specific domains; things where a life really depends on correctness. Outside of those cases, lightweight techniques provide much more bang for your buck imo.