Reliable Code

As the recent coronavirus outbreak has made painfully clear, the quantity and quality of our test efforts determine what defect rates we measure.

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, there was a strong interest in improving the accuracy of weather forecasts.

I spend much of my time analyzing code. In most cases that code was written by someone else, but it could just as easily have been written by an evil earlier…

In the very early days of C, the compiler written by Dennis Ritchie and supplied with the UNIX operating system entirely defined the language.

Most of us who work with software know all too well how easy it is to make small mistakes that escape detection in tests and come back to haunt us later.

Machine-learning techniques are starting to achieve some impressive feats.

In the half century since Edsger Dijkstra published The Structure of the THE-Multiprogramming System, it has become clear that the ability to design a…

So, what has changed since that first NATO software engineering conference in 1968 Depending on your point of view, nothing much has changed, or everything…

Software components have come a long way since Doug McIlroy first called for them in 1968.Topics: Doug McIlroy, Reliable Code, software…

When can we stop testing software, and when is it okay to skip tests The answers might not be obvious.Topics: Reliable Code, S-curve,…

Even the smallest coding mistake can cause huge problems when it slips by testing.

Dafny is a formal-verification system that takes a language-based approach.

Game strategies used in tools such as Deep Blue and AlphaGo might be the key to improving and automating software verification.Topics:…

Dead programmes were programs stored in write-only memory.

A look at the generation of prime numbers offers a cautionary tale about the perils of premature optimization.Topics: Robert Morris Sr.,…

Errors in safety-critical software can have disastrous consequences.

Doubt is key to becoming a good programmer. If you don't doubt the correctness of your work, you have no incentive to look for the hidden spoilers that are…

High-maintenance code not only is verbose but also tends to rely on unstated, poorly stated, or incompletely stated assumptions.

The author states that to reduce the risk of hard-to-spot coding mistakes, you can do one simple thing: correctly use parentheses.Topics: C…

In interactive systems, what's the weakest link: the computer or the human Explores issue involved with decision making via computer systems versus humans.

We often think of software development as an ideally streamlined process consisting of three phases: design, build, and test.

Naming conventions affect the readability of your code and the ease with which you can find your way around when you're reviewing that code.

Gerard Holzmann offers simple tools for developers who don't use IDEs but prefer to write code using their own screen editor and who do everything else with…

Writing reliable code means understanding bounds. Only a finite amount of memory is available for computation, only a finite amount of time exists to do it,…

Programs sometimes tend to lose their structure and clarity through the addition of error handling.

The SPOT Single Point of Truth principle says that developers should specify key pieces of information in one and only one place in their code.

Standard software testing might not catch important defects, and formal methods can be difficult to use.

Much of the increase in the size of software applications is unnecessary.

Programmers have found creative ways around programming rules.

The author considers what it takes to develop truly reliable software systems, and what the role is of program verification in all this.