Formalism and method

Abstract

Luckily, is getting strength the view that formal methods are useful tools within the context of an overall engineering process, heavily influenced by other factors that developers of formalisms should take into account. We argue that the impact of formalisms would much benefit from adopting the habit of systematically and carefully relating formalisms to methods and to the engineering context, at various levels of granularity. Consequently we oppose the attitude of conflating formalism and method, with the inevitable consequence of emphasizing the formalism or even just neglecting the methodological aspects. In order to make our reflections more concrete we illustrate our viewpoint addressing one particular activity in the software development process, namely the use of formal specification techniques.