News & Events

Rex Page to speak about hard-core Software Engineering
Seton Hall > News & Events 

Thursday, March 12, 2009
by: Marco T. Morazán, Ph.D.

Professor Rex Page

Professor Rex Page from the Department of Computer Science at the Universityof Oklahoma will deliver an invited talk entitled “Hard-Core Software Engineering” on March 20, 2009 at 2:00 PM in the Science and Technology Building Room 106. Professor Page is hosted by Dr. Marco T. Morazán and sponsored by the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.
 
Abstract:
Software design is a form of engineering when it applies principles of science and mathematics to the creation of software artifacts. In practice software design has generally fallen short of this standard. However, a computer program is a formal, mathematical object, which makes it amenable to the full power of symbolic reasoning. Modern tools of mechanized logic now make this power accessible to software developers. To make use of it, the application of logic and mechanized logic engines must be a standard element of computing education at the baccalaureate level.
 
With the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Dr. Page and his colleagues have developed three courses centered around the idea of applying formal logic to software development. The first of these courses, which is required of second-year computer science students at the University of Oklahoma, covers the traditional material of symbolic logic: propositions, predicates, and rules of inference, including induction. Instead of traditional examples that reason about the mortality of men or sums of integers, all of the examples in this course reason about, and verify properties of, software components and digital circuits. The other two courses, which are required of fourth-year students, apply mechanized logic in software development projects that scale gradually from small components with tens of lines of code, to medium scale systems with thousands of lines of code.
 
Dr. Page's presentation will describe the content of these courses, with a few examples for clarification, discuss the reception of the material by students and by advisers from industry who regularly review the University of Oklahoma computer science program, and speculate about potential, longer term effects of integrating symbolic logic, and especially mechanized logic, into computer science education.

For more information please contact:
Marco T. Morazán, Ph.D.
(973) 761-9466
morazanm@shu.edu