[rj722]

Article author here. Agree that the post merely touches the surface for static analysis -- because it was aimed towards an audience looking for an introduction to static analysis. The scope for the examples in this post had to be limited for this reason.

Inter-procedural pointer analysis -- Yes, a lot more trickier than these, but definitely more juicier. Will try to write a post on it in the coming weeks.

[UncleMeat]

I think limiting the scope is fine in general. But one small suggestion would be to make it more clear that this is just one very simple technique. This does not come across at all in the blog post. The diagram you show, for example, seems to state that this is just how static analyses work - they are given ASTs to work with. Or at the very least include some examples of semantic properties. It seems incongruent when you describe static analysis as understanding the behavior of the program without running it and then use examples that are about syntactic style violations.

[onemoresoop]

The article is great and it is clear it is intended for beginners. Everything is explained as for beginners which is good. A second part is very welcome.