Formal Description Techniques and Software Engineering: Some Reflections after 2 Decades of Research

Software engineering is based today to a large extend on rapid prototyping languages or design environments which are high level, very expresive, executable and enabling the quick production of running prototypes, whereas formal methods emphasices the preciseness and proper mathematical foundations which eanble the production of unambiguous references needed in protocol engineering. The goals of formal methods and rapid prototyping are not in contradiction, but have very rarely been considered together. This paper analyzes the evolution, background and main divergence points, in order to highligh how convergence could be achieved.