How to find bugs in systems that don't exist

This version of the talk was given at QCon London, 2026.

Building correct distributed systems takes thinking outside the box, and the fastest way to do that is to think inside a different box. One different box is “formal methods”, the discipline of mathematically verifying software and systems. Formal methods encourages unusual perspectives on systems, models that are also broadly useful to all software developers. In this talk we will learn two of the most important FM perspectives: the abstract specifications behind software systems, and the property they are and aren’t supposed to have.

Slides are here.

Questions

To do!