Interested in Formal Methods

[a hafiz]

Hello,

i share your interest in Formal Methods and especially in applying it to
HURD.  I have heard of VDM and B but not actually read about them let
alone use them. But i did do  some Z while in Uni. and although it was
difficult at first but once you get it, it's not too bad and i started
to like it! i thought Z was fun! (maybe something wrong with me...)

but then i was applying zed on simple exercises and relatively small
programming projects ( < 5000 lines of code). and even then i didn't
do it too well or apply it to rigorously. if i were too apply Zed to
HURD i'd probably change my mind.

Anyway, i'd be very inerested in any work on applying Formal Method to HURD
but i can't help you right now.

Jason More, had a valid point about the whole thing. Formal Method can be
very hard, and the amount of effort expended to apply it to HURD may not
be worth the small gain. it might still be interesting and fun though!
so IF i were to do it, it would be just for the heck of it and hopefully
there would be some sort of academic value to it, so it won't be a complete
waste. I have actually toyed with the idea myself but not knowing much about
Zed or OS design, it just remains an interest for me.

as far as concurrency in Zed, although Zed does not support concurency
directly, you could still write a Zed spec to specify concurrency problems.
You could also combine Zed and CSP in the same specification document. so
i don't think it's a big issue. there might even be a conccurent Zed
developed by now.

finally, my personal opinion on formal methods is that, it is not so
much the method or notation, but it is what the method or notation forces
you to do. What formal methods does is force you to think about your design
a bit more thoroughly and it guides you to do it correctly. when you just
draw some design base on some simple specs you tend to just do a quick
sketch and straight away jump to the coding. with formal methods, you are
more likely to expand your original idea, and explore the problem a little
more.

hafiz.

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