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Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Cliff JonesORCiD
This paper traces the important steps in the history --up to around 1990--of research on reasoning about programs. The main focus is on sequential imperative programs but some comments are made on concurrency. Initially, researchers focussed on ways of verifying that a program satisfies its specification (or that two programs were equivalent). Over time it became clear that {\em post facto} verification is only practical for small programs and attention turned to verification methods which support the development of programs; for larger programs it is necessary to exploit a notation of compositionality. Coping with concurrent algorithms is much more challenging -- this and other extensions are considered briefly. The main thesis of this paper is that the idea of reasoning about programs has been around since they were first written; the search has been to find tractable methods.
Author(s): Jones CB
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Year: 2003
Volume: 25
Issue: 2
Pages: 26-49
Date deposited: 26/11/2004
ISSN (print): 1058-6180
ISSN (electronic): 1934-1547
Publisher: IEEE
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2003.1203057
DOI: 10.1109/MAHC.2003.1203057
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