The Formal-Methods Towel---Is it Time to Throw it in?


Society is increasingly vulnerable to software failure and we ain't
seen nothing yet.   Formal methods have occupied the attention of some
of the best minds in computer science---starting with Turing and von
Neumann---for more than forty years.  Have they had more than a
negligible impact on software practice?


Is the formal-methods enterprise doomed to fail for basic conceptual
reasons?  Do new advances in computing technology---embedded systems,
multiple agents, the world-wide web---make formal methods irrelevant?
Is available deductive technology adequate to support formal software
development?  


Are we on the verge of a formal-methods explosion? Or will it be
another forty years?