I’ve ploped down some cash to gauge interest in a formal methods meetup. If you’re interested in learning and leveraging more formal artefacts in day to day software engineering then please go ahead and sign up while I figure out the logistics.
My current plan is to make it a mix of reading books and live presentations/tutorial. Current list of books I’m thinking about are “Software Abstractions”, “Practical TLA+”, “Software Foundations”, “Concrete Semantics”, etc. Also, open to suggestions on other reasonable starting materials for the first few meetings.
I’m potentially interested, but I’m in the South Bay (South San Jose). I organized a TLA+ workshop (run by Hillel Wayne) inside of Netflix, and am a big fan of both TLA+ and Alloy.
That’s cool, do you have any idea of the problems you want to apply them too, or are you more in the exploration phase now?
Cool. Will make sure to keep south bay folks in mind.
The number of folks doing formal methods outside proof experts is relatively small. Scattered, too. They might also have busy schedules only available in evenings or weekends. You might be better off starting with an online meetup during evening hours going with a series of online presentations, Q&A’s, and forum discussions. Negate the geographic and scheduling obstacles to them being together.
EDIT: The large number of people doing online courses and paid videos might corroborate my suggestion.
The goal is to widen the radius. I want to see if there is enough interest from regular software engineers in the area. The proof theory folks and the experts are probably the lowest priority at the moment because I don’t have to convince them of the value.
Gotcha!
A lot of people who’ve chatted with me about FM are in the Bay Area. There’s a lot of people who are interested, but they don’t know of each other. A meetup would be a great way to change this!
That’s a good point. I wonder if it’s a side effect of a lot of developers in Bay Area. Maybe on top of the ones that like trying new things.
I’m certainly interested, but consider myself a complete novice. Would I be welcome?
If you can write code or even just juggle symbols on paper then you’ll be fine.
Joined :)