Software Design: Tidy First?

Formal Methods Pay Off

Finally!

Kent Beck's avatar
Kent Beck
Sep 17, 2026
∙ Paid

Back in graduate school I spent two quarters TAing for the undergraduate formal methods course. While I have rarely pulled out full-blown formal methods in my career, I find that I use them informally all the time.

Fortune Buchholtz reintroduced me to formal methods a year ago or so. I tried them again but got lost in the proofs, eventually giving up bec…

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