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Paper advocates for combined testing, specification, and proof in software development

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

A new paper titled "Escaping the Quicksand: A Call to Arms" argues for a pragmatic approach to software development that combines testing, specification, and mathematical proof. The authors suggest that current development practices, while successful, accumulate significant technical debt and risks, which are amplified by AI-enabled engineering. They propose incrementally co-developing executable partial specifications alongside traditional code and tests to improve feedback loops for both AI and human developers. The paper calls for the creation of semantics infrastructure to support these more robust feedback mechanisms. AI

IMPACT Suggests improved software development practices could mitigate risks amplified by AI, leading to more robust AI systems.

RANK_REASON The item is a research paper published on arXiv discussing software development methodologies. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=0.7]

Read on arXiv cs.AI →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Paper advocates for combined testing, specification, and proof in software development

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The item is a research paper published on arXiv discussing software development methodologies. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=0.7]
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Peter Sewell, Jean Pichon-Pharabod ·

    Escaping the Quicksand: A Call to Arms

    arXiv:2608.19674v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Computing has been an astonishing success - but the accumulated technical debt exposes us all to huge costs in business and societal risk. For 75 years, we've built systems to prose specifications with test-and-debug development. …

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