If there is ever a science of programming language design, it will probably consist largely of matching languages to the design methods they support.

A semantic definition of a particular set of command types, then, is a rule for constructing, for any command of one of these types, a verification condition on the antecedents and consequents.

The establishment of formal standards for proofs about programs... and the proposal that the semantics of a programming language may be defined independently of all processors for that language, by establishing standards of rigor for proofs about programs in the language, appears to be novel.

It is, therefore, possible to extend a partially specified interpretation to a complete interpretation, without loss of verifiability... This fact offers the possibility of automatic verification of programs, the programmer merely tagging entrances and one edge in each innermost loop.

My message to the serious programmer is this: spend a part of your working day examining and refining your own methods. Even though programmers are always struggling to meet some future or past deadline, methodological abstraction is a wise long term investment.

If there is ever a science of programming language design, it will probably consist largely of matching languages to the design methods they support.