[MauranKilom]

I read this as the "specifications" in "requirements and specifications" for e.g. software projects. For example, "there should be a button that pulls in new data when clicked". That's generally pretty different from formal/mathematical specifications.

[Twisol]

Even those kinds of specifications don't compose well. For instance, if you have a solved problem, and you add a requirement, you don't really have a solved problem anymore, and the new solution may look extremely different from the old one.

[jkhdigital]

I’d suggest that they are in fact the same thing, and differ only in the level of formality... somewhat akin to the difference between machine code and interpreted scripts.

[skybrian]

An informal spec is about getting your intention across to humans who will interpret it in some reasonable way and fill in any gaps. It’s not math or a computer program at all.

David Chapman makes a distinction between rational and reasonable behavior, and it’s more like his “making breakfast” example:

https://metarationality.com/reasonableness-aspects

[gugagore]

Both machine code and interpreted scripts are executable, and so they have a formal meaning, at least for a given machine or interpreter.

They both feel as "formal" as the other, and much more so than a spec written in e.g. English.

[lou1306]

Uhm, are they that different, though?

For instance, you can formally express at least a part of the "there should be a button that pulls in new data when clicked" specification. In LTL, that would be something like something like:

[] (buttonClicked -> <>newDataPulled)

(Notice that I switched from actions (click, pull) to states (clicked, pulled), as LTL is a state-based logic.)

[pydry]

Yes.

E.g. according to the article "Specs are math" <-- not in my experience