Teaching Design by Contract Using Snap!

Marieke Huisman, Raúl E. Monti*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

With the progress in deductive program verification research, new tools and techniques have become available to support design-by-contract reasoning about non-trivial programs written in widely-used programming languages. However, deductive program verification remains an activity for experts, with ample experience in programming, specification and verification. We would like to change this situation, by developing program verification techniques that are available to a larger audience. In this paper, we present how we developed program verification support for Snap!. Snap! is a visual programming language, aiming in particular at high school students. We added specification language constructs in a similar visual style, designed to make the intended semantics clear from the look and feel of the specification constructs. We provide support both for static and dynamic verification of Snap! programs. Special attention is given to the error messaging, to also make this as intuitive as possible. Finally, we outline how program verification in Snap! could be introduced to high school students in a classroom situation.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Logic of Software
Subtitle of host publicationA Tasting Menu of Formal Methods
EditorsWolfgang Ahrendt, Bernhard Beckert, Richard Bubel, Einar Broch Johnsen
PublisherSpringer
Pages243–263
Number of pages21
Edition1
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-031-08166-8
ISBN (Print)978-3-031-08165-1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume13360

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