Formal Methods

A couple years back I was introduced to some of the folks at Galois, and they convinced me that formal methods can lower the cost of software development. Now I’m reading this post from Marc Brooker where he adds a bit of nuance that I think is helpful. I’ll summarize it this way: formal methods can lower the total cost to develop and maintain system-level software, where the requirements are stable and well-understood. If you’re designing a user-facing system and need to interactively respond to customer feedback—in other words, if your requirements are shifting and poorly understood—Agile remains the best choice.