Category Archives: specification

Process algebra (updated)

The first part of a critique of process algebra is below.  This relates to the Recursion and State paper and explicatory blog entry where I show how to compose classical automata and define them “abstractly” and to a complaint about … Continue reading

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The source of error (updated)

Here’s Edsger Dijkstra discussing the birth of the use of axiomatics in computer science – the start of “formal methods” research.  What’s striking is the assumed choice between “axiomatic” and “mechanistic” as if there was no other way. In a … Continue reading

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Robin Milner and Automata theory

I always had the impression that the entire group of “process algebra” people didn’t know much about automata, but this is surprising. But meanwhile I got somehow interested, and I don’t know how, in concurrency. I remember that, without linking … Continue reading

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