{"id":8123,"date":"2014-03-06T10:26:17","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T09:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=8123"},"modified":"2014-03-06T10:26:17","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T09:26:17","slug":"why-you-cannot-prove-software-correctness-report-from-qcon-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/8123-why-you-cannot-prove-software-correctness-report-from-qcon-london.html","title":{"rendered":"Why you cannot prove software correctness: report from QCon London"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m at <a href=\"http:\/\/qconlondon.com\/\">QCon London<\/a>, an annual developer conference which is among my favourites thanks to its vendor-neutral content.<\/p>\n<p>One of the highlights of the first day was Tom Stuart\u2019s talk on impossible programs. Using a series of entertaining and mostly self-referential examples, Stuart described why certain computing problems are uncomputable. He also discussed the \u201cHalting problem\u201d: unless you emasculate a computing language by removing features like While loops, you cannot in general answer the question \u201cwill this program ever finish\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>All good fun; but the dark side of the talk comes at the end, when Stuart proves with a flourish that a consequence is that you cannot prove software correctness. <\/p>\n<p>In a world that is increasingly software-driven, that is a disturbing thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m at QCon London, an annual developer conference which is among my favourites thanks to its vendor-neutral content. One of the highlights of the first day was Tom Stuart\u2019s talk on impossible programs. Using a series of entertaining and mostly self-referential examples, Stuart described why certain computing problems are uncomputable. He also discussed the \u201cHalting &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/8123-why-you-cannot-prove-software-correctness-report-from-qcon-london.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why you cannot prove software correctness: report from QCon London<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,80],"tags":[748,849],"class_list":["post-8123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional","category-software-development","tag-qconlondon","tag-software-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}