Re:The Case for Formal Verification (2013)
by Dewie on Sunday April 20, 2014 @09:25PM
(#7619221)
> Suppose I tell you 3 + 2 = 5 and 2 + 3 = 5. Did you learn anything non-trivial about + from those two examples? Did you learn that x + y = y + x for all x and y or that x + (y + z) = (x + y) + z? You can sample as many points as you want and you'll still be no wiser as to how + behaves and how it interacts with * or that the implementation of + even respects any of those properties. If you're going to put in the effort to generate unit tests then why not go a bit further and formally verify the correct functionality?
One could take the middle road and express commutativity, distributivity etc. through invariants and use a fuzzy testing tool to generate tests for it. Generating 100 tests sounds a lot better than a single handwritten one, though of course it's not as good as actually proving it for all inputs.
One could take the middle road and express commutativity, distributivity etc. through invariants and use a fuzzy testing tool to generate tests for it. Generating 100 tests sounds a lot better than a single handwritten one, though of course it's not as good as actually proving it for all inputs.