Assembling a prehistory for formal methods: a personal view
Thomas Haigh · Formal Aspects of Computing · 2019
Abstract The history of formal methods has barely been written. Haigh recapitulates his own exposure to relevant material during three phases of his development as a scholar: as a student of computer science, as a graduate student in history, and as a professor researching the history of computing. Triangulating these perspectives suggests that formal methods is one of several strands emerging from a community of researchers that gathered around Algol, flirted with software engineering, and found an enduring home in the IFIP working group on programming methodologies. Yet the story of how a declared “formal methods” movement emerged fromthis group has remains unclear.Haigh explores some relevant ideas fromacademic history, sketches historical connections between formal methods and other areas of computer science, and concludes with some suggestion for and challenges to formal methods participants who aim to tell the story of their field. This, he suggests, may cheer up Donald Knuth.