jd_pressman: recursive dependency proofs make formal verification impractically narrow
jd_pressman · x · 2026-10-23
In a discussion on formal verification, jdpressman argues the problems are mostly not computability but dependency structure: starting from scratch breaks everything, while working from the outside in yields minimal benefit and requires recursively rewriting all dependencies — so formal verification can only nibble at the middle. Verifying a middle library only works if it has no recursively provable dependencies, and you still have to trust system libc, leaving a tiny practical domain.
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