The history of formal methods has barely been written. Haigh recapitulates his own exposure to relevant material during three phases of his development as a scholar: as a student of computer science, as a graduate student in history, and as a professor researching the history of computing. Triangulating these perspectives suggests that formal methods is one of several strands emerging from a community of researchers that gathered around Algol, flirted with software engineering, and found an enduring home in the IFIP working group on programming methodologies. Yet the story of how a declared “formal methods” movement emerged fromthis group has remains unclear.Haigh explores some relevant ideas fromacademic history, sketches historical connections between formal methods and other areas of computer science, and concludes with some suggestion for and challenges to formal methods participants who aim to tell the story of their field. This, he suggests, may cheer up Donald Knuth.

中文翻译：

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为形式方法组装史前史：个人观点

形式化方法的历史几乎没有人写过。Haigh 概括了他作为学者在三个发展阶段接触相关材料的过程：作为计算机科学专业的学生、作为历史专业的研究生以及作为研究计算机历史的教授。对这些观点进行三角剖分表明，形式方法是从一群研究人员中涌现出来的几个分支之一，这些研究人员聚集在 Algol 周围，与软件工程调情，并在 IFIP 编程方法工作组中找到了一个持久的家。然而，关于如何从这个群体中出现的公开的“形式方法”运动的故事仍不清楚。Haigh 探讨了学术史中的一些相关思想，勾勒出形式方法与计算机科学其他领域之间的历史联系，最后，对旨在讲述其领域故事的正式方法参与者提出了一些建议和挑战。他认为，这可能会让 Donald Knuth 振作起来。