We introduce a "hands-on" experimentation approach for teaching mathematical specification and reasoning principles in a software engineering course. The approach is made possible by computer-aided analysis and reasoning tools that help achieve three ...

Interoperability is a key challenge in software engineering, whether expressed in terms of the compatibility of different systems and protocols, in terms of compliance to industry standards, or--increasingly--in terms of the ability to share and re-use ...

This paper is the preliminary report of a joint research project on developing a body of knowledge on model checking. The project is being carried out by four organizations that give model checking courses to software engineers in Japan. The paper ...

Although model checking is expected as a practical formal verification approach for its automatic nature, it still suffers from difficulties in writing the formal descriptions to be verified and applying model checking tools to them effectively. The ...

Universities offering Computing Science curricula should do so at the university level. Taking pragmatic shortcuts causes stagnation in professional practice. The essential element is the pervasive presence throughout the curriculum of mathematical ...

Formal methods were developed to provide systematic and rigorous techniques for software development, and they must be taught in the context of software engineering. In this paper, we discuss the importance of such a teaching paradigm and describe ...

Testing is an integral part of software engineering. When teaching this discipline, educators choose testing approaches to be implemented in their classes. But many of these approaches, no matter how well devised or comprehensive, fall short of being ...

Interesting how the term "software correctness" keeps popping up in this column. What is correct software, and can it be achieved -- if so how? The Math CountS columns strive to provide some insights into answering the latter question. One example I ...

We present and discuss a tool that checks the correctness of simple programs constructed according to the structured programming method. The tool is intended to provide interesting feedback to students learning the programming method: it detects ...

Because the concept of program correctness is generally taught as an activity independent of the programming process, most introductory computer science (CS) students perceive it as unnecessary and even irrelevant. The concept of contracts, on the other ...

Concurrency is a difficult subject to teach and learn. This paper presents a set of recipes for the use of Petri nets as a teaching aid of some fundamental concurrency concepts, in the context of an introductory concurrent programming course. Classroom ...

Testing accounts for 50% of the cost of software, yet it receives little treatment in most curricula. This paper presents some approaches to giving all students multiple, incremental exposures to software testing throughout the curriculum. A unifying ...

Until recently, Pascal was the first programming language taught to students. As more schools choose Ada or C++ as a first language, the debate on structured programming has been reopened ([Rob95]). We are no longer restricted to the while-statement: ...

This paper details a system to assist with the evaluation and administration of student assignments. In order to help with the evaluation of program execution, the system automatically compiles and executes the program while logging a copy of the ...

Three fundamental principles of static reasoning used to write imperative program code with built-in proof of its correctness are presented and explained in operational terms. It is argued that, although the traditional use of formal logic in the Hoare-...

The concept of combining loop invariants with algorithm analysis and design is a significant programming tool. However, teaching this concept is not easy. One way of motivating and supporting the introduction of such a concept, is by illustrating it ...

Student programmers have difficulty finding and fixing syntax, logic and style errors in their programs. The Code Analyzer for Pascal (CAP) analyzes programs that use a subset of the Pascal language and provides user-friendly feedback on the errors that ...