Static Analysis to Improve Software Reliability

At the EPFL I&C Research day, James R. Larus from Microsoft Research talked the way to build dependable software. Even though the computer have become incredibly more convenient, users are still often frustared, annoyed, and confused. He mentionned that people are still afraid to use computers and that software is the weakest link. Nowadays, Micorsoft uses static analysis to improve the construction of reliable system. They do semantic analysis to find programming language misuses, API usage errors, semantic errors (races, deadlocks), and abstraction-specific errors. He also explained how their KISS system works with concurent systems.

It is interesting to see one way Microsoft uses to lower users frustrations, annoyance, and confusion. Reliability is one thing, trust is another. I am wondering what efforts they also make to increase the trust of users to their systems.