I do not believe we will find the magic here. Program verification is a very powerful concept, and it will be very important for such things as secure operating system kernels. The technology does not promise, however, to save labor. Verifications are so much work that only a few substantial programs have ever been verified. Program verification does not mean error-proof programs. There is no magic here, either. Mathematical proofs also can be faulty. So whereas verification might reduce the program-testing load, it cannot eliminate it. More seriously, even perfect program verification can only establish that a program meets its specification. The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification."
( Frederick P. Brooks Jr. )
[ The Mythical Man-Month: Essays ]
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