BCTCS 2015: Tony Hoare on Concurrency Laws 🔍

Title: Laws of Programming with Concurrency
Abstract: The basic Laws of Nature sought by many branches of science, as well as the basic axioms postulated in many branches of mathematics, have historically been expressed in great generality as algebraic equations, or occasionally as inequalities. Nowadays these equations provide the theoretical foundation for the design of automated tools which are widely used to help scientists and engineers in pursuit of their goals. This is the way in which Isaac Newton still contributes to mechanics, Blaise Pascal to statistics, Clark Maxwell to electronics, and George Boole to computer Logic Design. How many Computer Scientists and Software Engineers are familiar with the laws which underlie their own professional practice? They are remarkably similar to the laws of arithmetic, taught even today to schoolchildren. I will present arguments that they are both generally true of computer programs, and provide the foundation for tools that are widely used in programming practice. And the laws of concurrent programming are no more complicated than those for sequential programming.