Natural Language Specifications vs Formal Specifications
Developers should learn and use Natural Language Specifications when working on projects that require close collaboration with business analysts, product managers, or clients to ensure requirements are accurately captured and implemented meets developers should learn formal specifications when working on safety-critical or high-assurance systems where errors can have severe consequences, such as in avionics, automotive software, or blockchain protocols. Here's our take.
Natural Language Specifications
Developers should learn and use Natural Language Specifications when working on projects that require close collaboration with business analysts, product managers, or clients to ensure requirements are accurately captured and implemented
Natural Language Specifications
Nice PickDevelopers should learn and use Natural Language Specifications when working on projects that require close collaboration with business analysts, product managers, or clients to ensure requirements are accurately captured and implemented
Pros
- +It is particularly valuable in agile environments for defining user stories, acceptance criteria, and automated tests, as it helps prevent scope creep and improves software quality by making specifications testable and verifiable
- +Related to: behavior-driven-development, test-driven-development
Cons
- -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case
Formal Specifications
Developers should learn formal specifications when working on safety-critical or high-assurance systems where errors can have severe consequences, such as in avionics, automotive software, or blockchain protocols
Pros
- +They are valuable for specifying complex requirements precisely, detecting design flaws early through model checking or theorem proving, and facilitating formal verification to prove system properties, reducing bugs and improving trustworthiness
- +Related to: model-checking, theorem-proving
Cons
- -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case
The Verdict
These tools serve different purposes. Natural Language Specifications is a methodology while Formal Specifications is a concept. We picked Natural Language Specifications based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.
Based on overall popularity. Natural Language Specifications is more widely used, but Formal Specifications excels in its own space.
Disagree with our pick? nice@nicepick.dev