TCS Excellence in Computer Science Week in Pune

Haven't posted in a while.  Been busy with my course on  Program Dynamics and preparing lectures for two workshops. Attended the TCS Excellence in Computer Science (TECS) week in Pune during Jan.3 to Jan.8. The theme this year was "Formal Methods in Software Verification, Testing, and Debugging". For details the reader may go to http://121.241.184.234:8000/tecsweek/tecsweek_home.html. Shankar Natarajan's lectures were especially exciting as also his method of lecturing.  He also drew my attention to the work of Dick Lipton. I am surprised by the following item from the wikipedia article on Richard Lipton: "De Millo, Lipton and Peris criticized  the idea of formal verification of programs and argued that Formal verifications in computer science will not play the same key role as proofs do in mathematics. Absence of continuity, the inevitability of change, and the complexity of specification of real programs will make formal verification of programs difficult to justify and manage."  How about that! All power to the mathematical proofs of mapcode! All power to further research to scale it up to industrial strength! It was a treat to hear Sir Tony Hoare speak about the importance of taking the initiative and going ahead with one's plans even if they appear to be not in step with what others are doing. A boost for Prof. Nori and me. That is exactly what we have been doing over the last few years. Interactions with Prof. Jayadev Misra and Prof. C.R.Muthukrishnan were illuminating and enlightening. At the conclusion of the programme I was given an opportunity to present mapcode ideas. The slides of the presentation have been uploaded here. The novelty of the approach received a good response from some of the younger participants especially. Looks like there is a gap in pedagogics that mapcode fills. Definitely encouraging.