My unusual hobby
I had to take a semester on formal proofs using Coq, the same tool the article talks about.Putting aside their steep learning curve, formal proof methods do not guarantee that the code you've written is bug free. They only guarantee that the code follows the requirements you defined given the conditions you also set on your inputs. You can think of it as a mathematical proof of your postconditions will hold given that your preconditions are true.And you know what? People do make mistakes establishing those preconditions and postconditions all the time, and the tool is not going to be of any help. You've proven your code, but it may not do what you actually wanted it to do.During a lecture I saw a tenured professor, who was a well-respected mathematician and expert in Coq, make some rather obvious mistakes while establishing those preconditions and postconditions. His proof was valid but worthless.When you add that writing those proofs is actually rather time consuming, you end up with a niche product with little real-world applicability, except possibly for safety-critical environments.