[This is the second part of a two-post series. The first part is here.]
Recently, I talked about using program verifiers in teaching proof techniques in undergraduate CS, and my own experience with using the Dafny verifier in an algorithms class. One thing that that post was missing was a student perspective. So I asked three of my students — Julie Eisenberg, Rebecca Smith, and Matthew Dunn-Rankin — what they thought of Dafny. In this post, I summarize their insightful feedback and ponder about its implications.
The takeaway message for me is that verification tools such as Dafny are an excellent way of introducing students to formal proofs. At the same time, some care is needed as we integrate these tools with our pedagogy. In particular, the automated reasoning capabilities of Dafny aren’t an unadulterated blessing, and we must make sure that students understand how to do formal proofs fully manually. We ought to also invest more effort on tools that make the proof process more productive, for example by giving users more feedback on why an attempt at a formal proof failed. Continue reading