Duration: 1:06:52

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A powerful, but limited, way to view software is as source code alone. Mathematical techniques, such as abstract interpretation and model checking, can indicate whether the program satisfies a formal specification. But, where does the formal specification come from? A program consists of much more than a sequence of instructions. Developers make use of test cases, documentation, variable names, program structure, the version control repository, and more. I argue that it is time to take the blinders off of software analysis tools: tools should use all these artifacts to deduce more powerful and useful information about the program. Researchers are beginning to make progress towards this vision. In this talk, I will discuss four initial results that find bugs and generate code, by making use of variable names, error messages, procedure documentation, and user questions.

See more on this video at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/analyzing-entire-program-applying-natural-language-processing-software-engineering/