"Finding bugs without running or even looking at code" by Jay Parlar

"Finding bugs without running or even looking at code" by Jay Parlar on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2019–2023.

Strange Loop Conference

talk · intermediate · evergreen

Open on YouTube

Jay Parlar's Strange Loop talk shows how model checkers such as Alloy can find complex bugs in a system's design without running or reading any code. He walks through modeling architectures and checking every possible sequence of operations, including a real security bug and a UI feature-interaction bug.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters point to it as the best practical introduction to Alloy and to lightweight formal modeling.

people recommended it: 4
separate months: 4
strong recommendations: 2
discussed on HN: 2019–2023

“There is a talk that gives a good overview on Alloy and how useful using something like this is”
— _andrei_, Oct 2023, in “Modeling CRDTs in Alloy – the importance of idempotence”

What HN commenters said

4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

ParetoOptimalApr 2023Strongly recommends

I was exposed to alloy by this wonderful video: "Finding bugs without running or even looking at code" by Jay Parlar ▶ this video I believe the general idea could be applicable in practice for core parts of most businesses software. So now I'm very interested in real world accounts of using alloy like this. Anyone have other posts like this one or experiences to share along these lines?

in “Modeling Git Internals in Alloy, Part 2: Commits and Tags” · View on HN

hwayneOct 2019Strongly recommends

There was a fantastic talk at strangeloop this year on Alloy: ▶ this video . The speaker used it to find a serious security bug in their live code and a feature interaction bug in their UI that had meant they had been writing broken code for the past _year_. (full disclosure I'm referenced towards the end)

in “Alloy is a language for describing structures and a tool for exploring them” · View on HN

_andrei_Oct 2023Recommends

There is a talk that gives a good overview on Alloy and how useful using something like this is: "Finding bugs without running or even looking at code" by Jay Parlar ▶ this video

in “Modeling CRDTs in Alloy – the importance of idempotence” · View on HN

kilotarasApr 2020Recommends

There's a great talk from StrangeLoop[0] where a presenter uses Alloy modelling in exactly the same manner: - generate a couple examples - see something wrong - add a rule - repeat [0] ▶ this video

in “Show HN: A basketball hoop to maximize shots that go in [video]” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Logic & formal methods Testing, debugging & developer tools Software architecture & designalloymodel checkingformal methodssoftware designbug finding