06.25.05
Dr. Joseph Kiniry visits the SAnToS Lab
We were very lucky to have Dr. Joseph Kiniry visit our lab yesterday. He was back in the states visiting family and traveling around to visit collaborators and apparently agreed to talk with us. Joe gave us a run-down on ESC/Java II and some of the advancements they are making while doing a complete re-design (see Joel, sometimes smart people do good things when they re-design in a smart way 
). But the best thing about his visit was our opportunity to fill him in on what we are working on. We gave him demos of Indus and Cadena (he had already seen a tutorial on Bogor at PLDI 05) and talked about our common interest, JML. So it looks like we might be able to collaborate with him on a lot of different angles. My favorite thing is that he is a true hacker and is willing to give our tools a try and provide constructive criticism (which we need from smart, hard-working people).
Now, if I could only get Bandera to a state in which I would not be embarrased if he took a look.
Not only is he an intelligent, hard-working researcher that shares common interests, he is quite a fun guy to be around. We had a common interest, OpenBSD. Apparently, he has been working to get them using some “light” formal methods and has been quite successful. He says he spent a lot of time lurky in an effort to understand what angle to take with them. I think he went with the “free beer” approach! On a serious note, he did make me re-evaluate how I want to sell Bandera. I should consider taking a particular group of people, understand their methods, and then get Bandera to solve their problem. I feel like we have been developing this huge hammer and convincing the guy that needs a screw-driver that if he just tries harder, he could use our hammer. Or maybe that is just the burn-out talking!