Much has been said about the effects that AI will have on software development, but there is an angle I haven’t seen talked about: I believe that AI will bring formal verification, which for decades has been a bit of a fringe pursuit, into the software engineering mainstream.
The future belongs to those who can refute AI, not just generate with AI
Why verification, not prompting, could shape the next decade of engineering
70 years of AI hype
Quoting from Olivia Guest et al. (2025) "Against the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia."
AI | 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey
84% of respondents are using or planning to use AI tools in their development process, an increase over last year (76%). This year we can see 51% of professional developers use AI tools daily.
Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source...
Despite widespread adoption, the impact of AI tools on software development in the wild remains understudied. We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how AI tools at the...
The Case Against Formal Verification, 50 Years Later - Ivan Gavran
Writings on software correctness, AI, formal verification, and other technical topics.
6 months to live for open models
The most serious test to date of open source AI’s viability is happening right now.
The Thoughts The Civilized Keep
The hype around a new AI language generator reveals the sterility of mainstream thinking on AI today — and indeed on how we think about thinking itself.
How we use AI at Stalwart
It is difficult to have a conversation about software in 2026 without AI showing up in it. Two years ago the interesting question was…
When Science Goes Agentic
In a couple of years, we will inspect AI-generated source code about as often as we inspect the assembly output of a compiler. Which is to say, far less often—outside of high-stakes and adversarial settings. The trajectory is clear: vibe coding is not a fad but a transition, a stepping stone. Debugging AI-generated code will shrink dramatically for a lot of everyday software—not because the code will be flawless, but because the feedback loops between generation, testing, and correction will tighten until human inspection becomes the bottleneck rather than the safeguard. In this respect, requiring the co-generation, with code, of mechanically verifiable formal attestations can also improve the process.
Our Uncertain Uncertainties
Even the experts inventing AI don’t know what will happen next.
The Real Reason We Still Need Software Developers in the World of AI
The dream of AI churning out perfect production-ready code doesn’t hold up against the reality of modern software development.
The third golden age of software engineering – thanks to AI, with Grady Booch