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Algebraic specifications: some old history and new thoughts. (English) Zbl 1088.68648

Summary: Thirty years ago, in September 1971, the “ADJ Group;; (Joe Goguen, Jim Thatcher, Eric Wagner, and Jesse Wright) was founded at IBM Research. In this paper we will sketch the history of the ADJ group, and give an overview of their technical contributions in the area of data type specification (making considerable use of hindsight). The aim here is to provide a unified treatment of the material that displays the mathematical simplicity, the power, and some of the shortcomings, of the approach. This is followed by some thoughts on why ADJ’s ideas have not had more effect on software development. Finally there is a section sketching my investigations of program specification that were motivated by these thoughts.

MSC:

68Q65 Abstract data types; algebraic specification
68-03 History of computer science
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