Object-Oriented Theorem Proving (OOTP): First Thoughts

Abstract

Automatic (i.e., computer-assisted) theorem proving (ATP) can come in many flavors. This document presents early steps in our effort towards defining object-oriented theorem proving (OOTP) as a new style of ATP.Traditional theorem proving (TTP) is the only well-known flavor of ATP so far. OOTP is a generalization of TTP. While TTP is strongly based on functional programming (FP), OOTP is strongly based on objectoriented programming (OOP) instead. We believe OOTP is a style of theorem proving that is no less powerful and no less natural than TTP and thus likely will be no less practically useful than TTP.In the document we also discuss, very briefly, a related notion of OO software verification (OOSV) based on OOTP. To clarify the relation between OOTP and TTP, we also touch on the relation between OOP and FP.