Building an IDE for the Calculational Derivation of Imperative Programs

TL;DR

This paper introduces CAPS, an IDE designed to facilitate the calculational derivation of imperative programs, making formal methods accessible to non-experts through an interactive and user-friendly interface.

Contribution

The paper presents the design and architecture of CAPS, a novel IDE that supports calculational derivation of imperative programs with an emphasis on accessibility and usability.

Findings

CAPS enables interactive program derivation.

The IDE maintains the traditional calculational style.

Design trade-offs improve user accessibility.

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an IDE called CAPS (Calculational Assistant for Programming from Specifications) for the interactive, calculational derivation of imperative programs. In building CAPS, our aim has been to make the IDE accessible to non-experts while retaining the overall flavor of the pen-and-paper calculational style. We discuss the overall architecture of the CAPS system, the main features of the IDE, the GUI design, and the trade-offs involved.