Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!lfcs!sean
From: sean@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Sean Matthews)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <1916@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 3 May 89 21:43:14 GMT
References: <854@odyssey.ATT.COM> <855@odyssey.ATT.COM>
Sender: news@etive.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: sean@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Sean Matthews)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Lines: 22

In article <855@odyssey.ATT.COM> gls@odyssey.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman) writes:
>Dr Hubert Matthews at CERNvax has privately sent me the following note.

[point made in favour of Formal methods by the good Doctor (good on two counts:
he shares a surname with me and he is in favour of formal methods - did you
ever run into Jon by the way?)]

>I do not share your faith in formal methods or methodologies.  To me,
>the work of programming consists of weaving order with chaos.  The amount

>Col. G. L. Sicherman
>gls@odyssey.att.COM
     ^^^^^^^

I just what to clear up a point; isn't Odyssey Richard Platek's operation
in Ithaca (sorry about the spelling) which specialises in mathematically
verified software i.e., formal methods?

Or has the good professor gone back to mathematical logic and left the field
to the hackers?

Se\'an