Experimental comparison of the comprehensibility of a Z specification and its implementation in Java

Snook, C. F. and Harrison, R. (2004) Experimental comparison of the comprehensibility of a Z specification and its implementation in Java. Information and Software Technology, 46 (14). pp. 955-971. ISSN 0950-5849 doi: 10.1016/j.infsof.2004.04.003

Abstract/Summary

Comprehensibility is often raised as a problem with formal notations, yet formal methods practitioners dispute this. In a survey, one interviewee said 'formal specifications are no more difficult to understand than code'. Measurement of comprehension is necessarily comparative and a useful comparison for a specification is against its implementation. Practitioners have an intuitive feel for the comprehension of code. A quantified comparison will transfer this feeling to formal specifications. We performed an experiment to compare the comprehension of a Z specification with that of its implementation in Java. The results indicate there is little difference in comprehensibility between the two. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/15384
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science
Uncontrolled Keywords	empirical assessment, formal specification, comprehension, FORMAL METHODS, MYTHS
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