Why engineers should consider formal methods

Presents an analysis of a typical rationale used to convince engineers of the potential usefulness of formal methods. This analysis reveals that the typical rationale is complicated, but fails to establish the truth of an essential proposition. As a result, the author gives a simple revised rationale, which shows conclusively why engineers should consider formal methods. The ideas in this revised rationale are not original. The contribution of this paper is in presenting the ideas in the context of an analysis of other approaches, and in a forum likely to be populated by engineers. Formality may eventually become the norm in software development.