Formal methods in software engineering education

Formal methods are seen as the Cinderella subject of software engineering, always hovering in the background, hoping to be invited to the ball. But exactly what are formal methods? Because they were fashionable in the eighties, the term was stolen by "informal" methods to provide themselves with a cloak of respectability-one of the claims of formal methods was that, by using them, it was possible to reduce the number of errors in a program and improve productivity; claims that any method would like to be associated with. The article defines formal methods as mathematically based methods-actually using mathematics to specify, design and implement a computer system.