[HN Gopher] Coq 8.13
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       Coq 8.13
        
       Author : infruset
       Score  : 108 points
       Date   : 2021-02-18 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (coq.inria.fr)
 (TXT) w3m dump (coq.inria.fr)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | threatofrain wrote:
       | What is the industry or academic prevalence or level of optimism
       | for Coq / Lean?
        
         | raptortech wrote:
         | Sample size of 1: I'm an EECS PhD student at MIT and one of my
         | required courses (6.822) is taught entirely in Coq
        
           | mncharity wrote:
           | The 6.822 page[1] has a draft[2] of Adam Chlipala's "Formal
           | Reasoning About Programs", "introducing both machine-checked
           | proof with [Coq] and approaches to formal reasoning about
           | program correctness".
           | 
           | [1] https://frap.csail.mit.edu/main [2]
           | http://adam.chlipala.net/frap/frap_book.pdf
        
           | mcncm wrote:
           | Any chance you took FRAP last spring? Hi, maybe-classmate :)
        
           | tracyhenry wrote:
           | I'm from MIT EECS too. Just to clarify for other people - we
           | have a pool of "required courses", from which we only need to
           | choose a few. So it's not like we must learn Coq.
           | 
           | OTOH, I've TAed an undergrad research class and it's mind
           | boggling how many people are doing Coq-related research.
        
         | sinkasapa wrote:
         | Theorem provers are increasingly popular in certain areas of
         | linguistics.
        
           | wk_end wrote:
           | Can you say more? My background is in PLT and my half-
           | finished thesis was in Coq - but I've got a real interest in
           | (human) languages too. I'd love to hear about how the two are
           | intermingling.
        
       | iandinwoodie wrote:
       | Out of genuine curiosity, does anyone know how to pronounce the
       | name of this project? I checked the "About Coq" page on the
       | official website, the top-level README in the project's
       | repository, and the project's Wikipedia but failed to find any
       | suggested phonetics. There also doesn't seem to be a definitive
       | answer on the related English Stack Exchange post I found (link:
       | https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/435117/how-is-co...)
        
         | tom_mellior wrote:
         | The general answer to "how to pronounce word X in language Y"
         | is https://forvo.com/. In this case:
         | https://forvo.com/word/coq/#fr
        
         | bigdict wrote:
         | It's pronounced cock, coq means rooster/cock in French.
        
           | fovc wrote:
           | The o sound is slightly different. More like the first o in
           | bottom
        
             | ta8645 wrote:
             | That sounds the same to my ear. At least the way I
             | pronounce both words. c-awe-ck and b-awe-ttom.
        
               | Pet_Ant wrote:
               | I believe in most North American dialects "corn" is one
               | of the only open "o" in common usage. Try to pronounce an
               | "o" _without_ ending it in a  "w" sound. Just holding it
               | longer... and then stop without closing your lips.
        
               | Erlangen wrote:
               | You can listen here for the difference,
               | https://www.linguee.fr/francais-
               | anglais/search?source=auto&q....
               | 
               | with French pronunciation on top, English beneath.
        
           | iandinwoodie wrote:
           | Very interesting. So we can derive the phonetics from those
           | provided for coq au vin (/,kak oU 'vae/), which I have
           | apparently been mispronouncing for a while.
        
         | bnegreve wrote:
         | From coq FAQ:
         | 
         | Did you really need to name it like that?
         | 
         | Some French computer scientists have a tradition of naming
         | their software as animal species: Caml, Elan, Foc or Phox are
         | examples of this tacit convention. In French, "coq" means
         | rooster, and it sounds like the initials of the Calculus of
         | Constructions CoC on which it is based.
         | 
         | https://coq.inria.fr/V8.1/faq.html#htoc4
        
           | noblethrasher wrote:
           | Also, Thierry Coquand, who is behind CoC, and is also one of
           | the developers of the software that became Coq.
        
       | frollo wrote:
       | I've never hated a piece of software with the same burning
       | passion I reserve for Coq, but I'm happy to see they are still
       | around releasing new way to brutalize the mind of the unprepared.
        
         | tluyben2 wrote:
         | Why is that? And what alternative do you prefer? I do not mind
         | it for what it is meant for. I rather would have it more
         | practical (instead of having to write software twice: once to
         | prove it and once to execute it), but that is also very new and
         | experimental, like F* or Idris.
        
           | frollo wrote:
           | As I said before, it was mostly because it used to crash a
           | lot for weird reasons (I think it didn't really like
           | something in my laptop's memory) and the only explanations I
           | ever got were in French.
           | 
           | If they finally finished translating the documentation and
           | the errors (or fixed whatever memory weirdness was affecting
           | my version) it wouldn't be so bad. I'd still hate it from the
           | countless sleepless night trying to get it start again before
           | the weekly assignment's deadline, though.
        
         | tobmlt wrote:
         | This is a beautiful, dark humored, hilarious comment. Thanks
         | for it!
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | bidirectional wrote:
         | I'd be interested in hearing why, or at least hearing the
         | context behind it (i.e. there's a big difference between an
         | undergrad forced to use it for a project and a dependent types
         | researcher who prefers Lean)?
        
           | frollo wrote:
           | It was about 4 or 5 years ago, when I was in grad school.
           | 
           | The main problem I had with it is that it kept crashing or
           | failing for misterious reason and it just printed out some
           | obscure French error message (which I was forced to pass
           | through Google Translate, since nobody in the whole class
           | could speak French). This only happened for the most obscure
           | errors, while the more common and easy to spot ones (logical
           | errors, typos...) were well documented in English.
           | 
           | Also a lot of useful parts of the manual (and the community
           | posts around it) were written in French.
           | 
           | I don't think it's really inferior to other tools, but the
           | bad documentation and tendency to crash (which I hope had
           | been fixed by now, TBH) got on my nerves.
        
             | julienreszka wrote:
             | Liar
        
             | tom_mellior wrote:
             | Lest anyone read this and fear that this is common: In my
             | experience it isn't. Nor was it 4 or 5 years ago. I've
             | never seen Coq crash at all, nor spit out any error message
             | in French, and I was a full-time user for a while.
        
         | deathtrader666 wrote:
         | Alright, but why?
        
           | Tyr42 wrote:
           | I used it, and while I didn't hate it, I can totally see why
           | it could inspire someone to write such a comment.
        
       | bigdict wrote:
       | For Harambe?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | JNRowe wrote:
       | Somewhat off-topic, but does anyone know the reason Inria seems
       | to have developed such a specialisation around these types of
       | tools? I get why you'd be there today, but is there a common
       | link/person when that started? If so, I'd love a little nudge
       | about where to find out more.
       | 
       |  _Edit_ : Thanks for responses. And a warning to others: don't
       | start following links to advisers and students in Wikipedia, it
       | _never_ finishes.
        
         | davidivadavid wrote:
         | France has a very mathy culture that emerges from institutions
         | like the Ecole Normale Superieure, and people like Gerard Huet,
         | Xavier Leroy, Thierry Coquand, etc. who have been among the top
         | scientists in that domain for a while and have aggregated teams
         | around them.
        
           | alentist wrote:
           | Jean-Yves Girard is another one.
        
         | Fede_V wrote:
         | INRIA is an exceptional institution and is able to hire a lot
         | of amazing talent. They were one the earliest public research
         | institutions that had a separate career track for developers
         | and technical staff.
         | 
         | It's truly a national gem. Researchers at INRIA are responsible
         | for scikit-learn, coq, ocaml, etc etc.
        
         | user5994461 wrote:
         | It's a national research institutions who's specialized into
         | this sort of thing.
         | 
         | To caricature for US readers, you can think of it as a thousand
         | Google PhD who have a guaranteed job for life and nothing to do
         | but research, any research they might be interested in.
        
           | JNRowe wrote:
           | I fear I may have phrased my question poorly. I can
           | understand why you'd gravitate toward there now, I'm more
           | generally curious about how that specialisation came to be in
           | the first place. Was there a specific catalyst? A person or
           | event perhaps.
           | 
           | For example, from my Wikipedia trail I see Maurice Nivat come
           | up in the adviser camp for a few of the more current names.
        
       | apetersonBFI wrote:
       | Working with Coq and trying to understand and use it has been a
       | good brain stretcher for me. It's solidified my understanding of
       | proofs to prove a bunch of simple number theory things in it, as
       | well as creating my own types and experimenting with them.
       | 
       | It's a bit above my academic pay grade, so reading the
       | documentation is always daunting, but I understand the basics.
       | Still can't figure out how to use the notation system.
        
       | iso8859-1 wrote:
       | The release notes do not spell Xia Li-yao consistently. Which is
       | family name, and which is given?
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-18 23:02 UTC)