Ankush Desai

I am honored to have gotten the opportunity to write an ACM Queue article with @MarcJBrooker . In this article, We survey different approaches used at AWS for reasoning about systems correctness. Please check out the article here: lnkd.in/dn_CqkW2.

Happy to announce that our paper “Specy: Learning Specifications for Distributed Systems from Event Traces” has been accepted at OOPSLA’26. This is a joint effort with Ankush (@ankushpd) and the P team! It’s not possible without all the great collaborators!

𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 (𝗣𝗵𝗗) 𝗮𝘁 𝗦𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗳𝗹𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲! (𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗜) We are hiring PhD interns for 2026 to join our team. Snowflake is building novel platform to effortless adopt Generative AI and scale Data Analytics. The focus of this internship will be to perform research at the intersection of 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝘀, 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗜. Building frameworks and techniques that enable developers build correct distributed systems as well as deploy reliable AI agents. Snowflake is growing and moving fast with Systems for AI. If you are or (know of) PhD students working in the domain of AI, distributed systems, and formal methods. Please spread the word and apply on the following link: jobs.ashbyhq.com/snowflake/form…

OOPSLA reviews are out. The past couple of years, quality of reviews (length and content) has improved a lot. Thanks to all the reviewers and chairs for the effort. #oopsla

Please check out our paper on checking “observational correctness of database systems”. Its first line of work as far as I know that checks both SQL semantic as well as consistency correctness of databases. Really enjoyed working on this problem. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/37…

Very soon there is going to be a trillion dollar market with startups that will focus on cleaning up the software mess created by vibe coding developers. A billion dollar industry of vibe coding agents creating a trillion dollar market to clean it up. Future looks amazing.. time to dive into the mess.

My group, UT-SysML (ut-sysml.ece.utexas.edu), will be hiring new students this fall! Do apply, mention my name in your applications, and finally, don't forget to send me an email after you submit your application! 📢📢📢📢 @UT_SysML

@graninas I hear you, but there are good side of it as well. I think the last part you said is what hurts the most and loss of trust.

No idea what side you are in, but I have several statements about formal verification: - it is not needed and isn't beneficial to 99.9% of projects - it will never be a worthy mainstream practice - it is extremely expensive - it is more about doing Math rather than about developing a working product - it is unable to verify domain meaning in most cases because domain meaning is not formalizable to this extent and/or too high-level and/or deals with the dirty real world - formal verification folks use propaganda methods to convince everybody that they do a very important work - in projects, they often do something they present grandiosly while nothing of a value reaches the product. Prove me wrong.

I am a formal methods expert, and I highly recommend not to be believe everything that a formal methods expert says and claims :).

Loved reading this excellent post by @MarcJBrooker and @ankushpd: Systems Correctness Practices at Amazon Web Services on how they use formal methods internally at AWS. One of the best articles I've read this year on formal verification and testing. I liked how this article lists various methods and how they're used to solve particular cases. Also includes references to some great papers.

@ilyasergey This has been the struggle of my research. The community looking down on work that does not have “novelty” or the “cool math” in it. But then, I understand that it’s all driven by what the reviewers accept in these conferences and tenure.

Hot take: the programming languages research community should focus less on complex solutions to very narrow problems in the name of novelty, and more---on making existing solutions accessible to non-experts.

Thanks for the interest, I will coordinate and get an update on this soon!

I have been thinking about creating a community/channel/forum of developers interested in "formal and semi formal methods" applied to distributed systems (everything open source). Including techniques like model checking, deterministic simulation, etc. Are there forums like this already? Suggestions?

@mgill25 Yes. Was thinking of that.

@ankushpd A discord ?

It all started with P being mentioned in reinvent keynote for its usage in the launch of S3 strong consistency. In the next 4 years, P is used by several other teams across Amazon. More details in the CACM article: cacm.acm.org/practice/syste…

@el_yawd @MarcJBrooker @CACMmag We are in the process of putting it out, soon. You know the place (repo) already :).

@MarcJBrooker @CACMmag @ankushpd My bad, I found it: github.com/p-org/PObserve

Interested in how we test our systems at Amazon? In @CACMmag, @ankushpd and I write about the evolution of systems correctness and testing practices at AWS. We cover a mix of classic approaches, formal approaches, and new techniques like deterministic simulation.

@ankushpd's amazing talk on system correctness at #BugBash 2025 was super dense and super detailed -- so here it is with a handy pause button! antithesis.com/blog/2025/bugb…