Abstract
This paper examines some aspects of the aims and goals of the RODIN project and asks whether a successful outcome of the project will remove the need for us to worry about programming languages and the meaning of program source code. In common with some other currently ascendent approaches to software engineering, such as model-based development, RODIN is leading towards the construction of software models (in RODIN’s case precise software models) from which we may hope to generate source or even object code. So, does this remove the need for us to be concerned with the form these automatically-generated, intermediate representations take? Perhaps rather surprisingly, I conclude that the need to show an unbroken chain of confidence from requirements to object code means that programming languages and their analysis, remain an extremely important topic. I hope to show that the ability to produce better specifications and designs, as promised by approaches exemplified by RODIN, is a necessary precondition for effective high-integrity software development rather than a substitute for approaches currently in use.
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Amey, P. (2006). Why Programming Languages Still Matter. In: Butler, M., Jones, C.B., Romanovsky, A., Troubitsyna, E. (eds) Rigorous Development of Complex Fault-Tolerant Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4157. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11916246_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11916246_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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