Derrick G. Kourie is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He has published extensively on software engineering, algorithm construction and analysis, and formal methods and specification languages. His goal is to combine theory and practice in a way that impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the software process. Bruce W. Watson is a full professor in the Department of Information Science at Stellenbosch University, and professor extraordinary at the University of Pretoria and director of the FASTAR (Finite Automata Systems – Theoretical and Applied Research) group, spanning the Netherlands, South Africa, the USA, and Finland. His research and development activities cover programming languages, automata and their applications, algorithms, parallelism, and reconfigurable computing.

"This book is a must-read for every computer science student and every computing professional involved in software development. Based on a set of simple but powerful formal rules originally invented by computing pioneers E. W. Dijkstra and C. A. R. Hoare, the authors introduce the reader to the development of elegant and provably correct software. By emphasizing construction with a priori built-in correctness, the book goes one decisive step beyond formal verification. The goal is ambitious but the authors fully deliver. With a minimum of formalistic overhead, they walk the reader through a series of carefully chosen examples and use cases, thereby gradually unleashing the full power of the methodology. The book's main merit, however, lies in the fact that it convincingly disproves the common belief that formal methods are not practicable in the "real" world." Jurg Gutknecht, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

• Introduction.- Background.- Simple Examples.- Intermediary Examples.- Procedures and Recursion.- Case Study: Lattice Cover Graph Construction.- Case Study 2: Classifying MADFA Construction Algorithms.

Derrick G. Kourie is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He has published extensively on software engineering, algorithm construction and analysis, and formal methods and specification languages. His goal is to combine theory and practice in a way that impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of the software process. Bruce W. Watson is a full professor in the Department of Information Science at Stellenbosch University, and professor extraordinary at the University of Pretoria and director of the FASTAR (Finite Automata Systems – Theoretical and Applied Research) group, spanning the Netherlands, South Africa, the USA, and Finland. His research and development activities cover programming languages, automata and their applications, algorithms, parallelism, and reconfigurable computing.

"This book is a must-read for every computer science student and every computing professional involved in software development. Based on a set of simple but powerful formal rules originally invented by computing pioneers E. W. Dijkstra and C. A. R. Hoare, the authors introduce the reader to the development of elegant and provably correct software. By emphasizing construction with a priori built-in correctness, the book goes one decisive step beyond formal verification. The goal is ambitious but the authors fully deliver. With a minimum of formalistic overhead, they walk the reader through a series of carefully chosen examples and use cases, thereby gradually unleashing the full power of the methodology. The book's main merit, however, lies in the fact that it convincingly disproves the common belief that formal methods are not practicable in the "real" world." Jurg Gutknecht, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

• Introduction.- Background.- Simple Examples.- Intermediary Examples.- Procedures and Recursion.- Case Study: Lattice Cover Graph Construction.- Case Study 2: Classifying MADFA Construction Algorithms.