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What works (and doesn't) selling formal methods

This article began life as a talk I gave in late 2024. I love formal methods—I should say that to begin with, because this article is mostly about what doesn’t work when trying to do FM projects.

A fancy new correctness technology would introduce costs (training, engineering, friction during development) and in their view, they wouldn’t see any benefit from that investment. The problem is this really limits the target market for FM to a tiny number of security-critical components used by the most paranoid and well-resourced organizations on earth. The only reason formal techniques aren’t more popular (according to this theory) is that engineering teams are unaware, conservative, maybe put off by superficial difficulties like poor interfaces and documentation.

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