Back To Schedule

Program Correctness and its Limitations

16:30 - 18:00 Thursday 1st May 2025 MT Flug Auditorium
Intermediate
Advanced
Math/Analysis

We talk about "correct" programs all the time, but what does that really mean? This talk dives into the tricky business of defining program correctness, exploring several attempts and their pitfalls along the way. Even with a solid definition, we'll see how formal correctness only goes so far in real-world software development. The talk concludes by looking at the bigger picture: what are we actually trying to achieve with correctness, and are there better ways to get there?

View Slides

David Sankel

Principal ScientistAdobe

David Sankel is a Principal Scientist, leads Adobe's Software Technology Lab, and is an active member of the C++ Standardization Committee. His experience spans microservice architectures, CAD/CAM, computer graphics, visual programming languages, web applications, computer vision, and cryptography. He is a frequent speaker at C++ conferences and specializes in large-scale software engineering and advanced C++ topics. David’s interests include dependently typed languages, semantic domains, EDSLs, and functional reactive programming. He was the project editor of the C++ Reflection TS, is the Executive Director of the Boost Foundation, and authored several C++ proposals including pattern matching and language variants.