Abstract
For many decades, computer science researchers have predicted that the ”Formal Methods” that they develop and advocate would bring about a drastic improvement in the quality and cost of software. That improvement has never materialized. This talk explain the difference between the methods and notations that constitute ”Formal Methods” and the mathematical methods and notation that are used successfully in other areas of Engineering. It discusses the reasons for the failure of Formal Methods to effect the desired changes in the practise of software.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Liu, Z., Parnas, D.L., Trancón y Widemann, B.: Documenting and verifying systems assembled from components. Frontiers of Computer Science in China 4(2), 151–161 (2010)
Parnas, D.L.: Precise documentation: The key to better software. In: Nanz, S. (ed.) The Future of Software Engineering, pp. 125–148. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Parnas, D.L. (2011). The Use of Mathematics in Software Development. In: Cerone, A., Pihlajasaari, P. (eds) Theoretical Aspects of Computing – ICTAC 2011. ICTAC 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6916. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23283-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23283-1_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23282-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23283-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)