Martin J. Maney wrote:

> With respect to testing, Dijkstra said it long ago: testing is adequate to
> show the presence of faults, but never their absence [fairly close
> paraphrase here].  The only way in principle to prove a system reliable
> would be to construct a formal proof in parallel with the design

&etc.

Actually, the only really provable stuff I know of is in research in the
UK, and is worse than you indicate by about an order of magnitude...

& boy, if you do that structured stuff by the book, it sure can get in
the way; I have yet to see any technique that a really good programmer
doesn't already use >> when it applies << . The rest of it can go jump
in the lake.

Maybe the classical structured techniques and all the overblown systems
for their use constitute a good test of the approximate level of
capability of a programmer: when you get to the point that you say "Oh,
I already do that", then you've got it.

== Tom

P.S. If you saw the interview of Knuth in DDJ last month, you might get
the idea he wouldn't necessarily agree with my point of view...