Section: Scientific Foundations

Research method

We are inspired by formal methods and logic to construct new tools for software analysis, transformation and generation. We try and proof the correctness of new algorithms using any means necessary.

Nevertheless we mainly focus on the study of existing (large) software artifacts to validate the effectiveness of new tools. We apply the scientific method. To (in)validate our hypothesis we often use detailed manual source code analysis, or we use software metrics, and we have started to use more human subjects (programmers).

Note that we maintain ties with the CWI spinoff “Software Improvement Group” which services most of the Dutch software industry and government and many European companies as well. This provides access to software systems and information about software systems that is valuable in our research.