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"Finding bugs without running or even looking at code" by Jay Parlar

Strange Loop Conference4 HN recommenders · 2019–2023
42K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2019-09-14

Jay Parlar's Strange Loop talk shows how model checkers such as Alloy can find complex bugs in a system's design without running or reading any code. He walks through modeling architectures and checking every possible sequence of operations, including a real security bug and a UI feature-interaction bug.

HN commenters point to it as the best practical introduction to Alloy and to lightweight formal modeling.

Logic & formal methodsTesting, debugging & developer toolsSoftware architecture & design

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4 comments from Hacker News

@hwayne2019 · in “Alloy is a language for describing structures and a tool for exploring them”

There was a fantastic talk at strangeloop this year on Alloy: [VIDEO] . The speaker used it to find a serious security bug in their live code and a feature interaction bug in their UI that had meant they had been writing broken code for the past _year_. (full disclosure I'm referenced towards the end)

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@kilotaras2020 · in “Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]”

There's a great talk from StrangeLoop[0] where a presenter uses Alloy modelling in exactly the same manner: - generate a couple examples - see something wrong - add a rule - repeat [0] [VIDEO]

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@ParetoOptimal2023 · in “Modeling Git Internals in Alloy, Part 2: Commits and Tags”

I was exposed to alloy by this wonderful video: "Finding bugs without running or even looking at code" by Jay Parlar [VIDEO] I believe the general idea could be applicable in practice for core parts of most businesses software. So now I'm very interested in real world accounts of using alloy like this. Anyone have other posts like this one or experiences to share along these lines?

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@_andrei_2023 · in “Modeling CRDTs in Alloy – the importance of idempotence”

There is a talk that gives a good overview on Alloy and how useful using something like this is: "Finding bugs without running or even looking at code" by Jay Parlar [VIDEO]

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