For more information on literate programming, the reader is directed to knuth s early founding work knuth83 and knuth84. Theres somewhat more to knuthian style literate programming than that. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate. Many examples are given, including excerpts from the programs for tex. His idea was that the code and the documentation should be a single document, written in a freeflowing mixture of pascal and tex, c and latex, or more generally, a text markup. So, for example, a literate program would start with a section like this. Literate programming is a programming methodology that combines a programming language with a documentation language, making programs more robust, more portable, and more easily maintained than programs written only in a highlevel language. Back in 1984, donald knuth wrote let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. The code segments are arranged not according to execution order or the logical structure of the. The literate programming system that knuth designed did much, much more than immediately meets the eye, namely it overcome many shortcomings in the underlying programming language that the code generation tool generated from knuths source document, namely standard pascal. Newest literateprogramming questions feed subscribe to rss.
The web style of literate programming was created by d. The term literate programming was coined by knuth in his paper from 1984, in which also a particular tool for literate programming was introduced. Literate programming, as well as comments in general, is not about what your code is doing. One speculation for the reason behind knuths pushing of lp is that according to stanfords intellectual property policy, stanford would have owned all of knuths code, but not his published writing. Order your code for others to read, not for the compiler. This anthology of essays from donald knuth, the father of computer science, and the inventor of literate programming includes early essays on related topics such as structured programming, as well as the computer journal article that launched literate programming itself. It is all about why and how, and this essential information is almost always missing without a proper literate programming. Knuth computer science department, stanford university, stanford, ca 94305, usa the author and his associates have been experimenting for the past several years with a programming language and documentation system called web. It was proposed by donald knuth in 1984 in his article donald knuth. But knuths web and cweb are the only major literate programming tools that i know about that actively typeset the code.
Literate programming is the combination of documentation and source code together in a fashion suited for reading by human beings. Literate programming, invented in 1981 by the same donald knuth who wrote the art of computer programming and the document language tex, is a technique in which a program is written as a humanoriented document interspersing discussion and code. The documented latex style of programming is regarded by some as a form of literate programming, though it only contains a subset of. Contribute to tangentforkscweb development by creating an account on github. For more information on literate programming, the reader is directed to knuths early founding work knuth83 and knuth84. Mozilla has its own developer room and a booth and many or our. Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced by donald knuth in which a computer program is given an explanation of its logic in a natural.
Extm program, one of his goals was to publish it as a program of which a professor of computer science might be proud, in spite of the fact that it meets realworld constraints and compromises 2, p. Literate programming article about literate programming. You dont read documentation like a novel, cover to cover. Donald knuth introduced literate programming in 1984 as an alternative perspective on the motivation of the programmer.
Recently, i restumbled on the idea of literate programming while leveling up with orgmodes, babel project. He argued that there needed to be a change in the way that programmers view the way they work. The main idea is to treat a program as a piece of literature, addressed. Ive been playing with various ways of doing literate programming in python. It is called literate programming, it is a great idea that we owe to d. Many examples are given, including excerpts from the programs for tex and metafont. Whats the best way to do literate programming in python. Literate programming was invented by donald knuth one of the few real geniuses ever to grace computer science as a way of making programs easier to understand. The bottom line on knuth s literate programming idea.
Literate programming ultimately is a testament to the limitations of language expression. I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature. Donald knuth on open source, multicore, and why literate. Additionally, there is a paperliterate program which implements an o n time. Knuths other idea was that the best order to explain the parts of the program in a journal article is not going to be the same as the order that the computer needs to see the code. Learn to program with literate programming hackaday. Wikipedia, as of june 2006, introduces the concept of literate programming in the following way.
Extm program, one of his goals was to publish it as a program of which a professor of computer science might be proud, in spite of the fact that it meets real. In 1984, knuth introduced the idea of literate programming. What i call the knuth model of literate programming views things differently. Some of the tools even support nonlatex formats for composing the documentation in the program, so you dont have to endure that if you dont like latex. Download a free cweb distribution for microsoft windows. A literate program is a literary entity, written to be read from beginning to end, and taking on the character of a book or essay. Provide tools to support donald knuth s literate programming using xml instead of tex. The idea was that a programmer wrote one document, the web file, that combined documentation with code. In haskell, a literate program is one with the suffix. Literate programming is the writing of computer programs primarily for human beings to read, similar to a work of. Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced by donald knuth in which a computer program is given an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as english, interspersed with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which compilable source code can be generated. Knuth s literate programming knut84 bent86a bent86b is one approach for shifting the programmers focus to include other humans as code consumers.
It is called literate programming, it is a great idea that we owe to. When i do the latex export to a pdf, i would like the name of the file the code gets tangled to to be displayed by each code block. Donald knuths original paper, where he coined the term literate programming. This is about the principles of literate programming, but also about the potential for increasing programming literacy. Literate programming with javascript and html ever since i started to work on programming languages and models, i was intrigued by the problem of developer productivity. Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced by donald knuth in which a computer program is given an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as english, interspersed with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which compilable source code can be generated the literate programming paradigm, as conceived by knuth, represents a move away from writing. Webs design encourages writing programs in small chunks which knuth called modules he also. But knuth s web and cweb are the only major literate programming tools that i know about that actively typeset the code. The goal of this project is to create a literate programming tool which keeps most, if not all of the features of knuth and levys original cweb system, but simplifies the system and adds even more features.
Provide tools to support donald knuths literate programming using xml instead of tex. If nothing happens, download github desktop and try again. I like noweb, but i have two main problems with it. Literate programming, a concept central to eve, was an idea from this time that never fully gained traction, and remains a largely unexplored yet potentially transformative direction for programming. Is not based on any specific dtd or programming language, but instead uses processing instructions for processing the literate programs. Literate programming tools then parse the file to produce either readable documentation or compilable source. Beautifully typeset your code so one can curl up in bed to read it like a novel. Literate programming published in computer journal british computer society publication but it was clouded by knuth excessive attention to.
Newest literateprogramming questions stack overflow. In a literate haskell program, there are two ways to distinguish between code and noncode portions. Oct 21, 2015 literate programming is an approach to programming introduced by donald knuth in which a program is given as an explanation of the program logic in a natural language, such as english. Jan 23, 2006 literate programming, invented in 1981 by the same donald knuth who wrote the art of computer programming and the document language tex, is a technique in which a program is written as a humanoriented document interspersing discussion and code. Next, a literate programming software that the special notation is written for parses the string notations to separate the programming. Ive really become enamored with the idea of literate programming but figured that the best way to reintroduce it to others is the same way knuth did with examples. Donald knuth is the inventor of tex and literate programming, professor emeritus at stanford university, winner of the acm turing award, and author of the art of computer programming. As originally conceived by don knuth, literate programming involves pretty printing of various view of code and documentation from a single source. As far as i know, knuth is the only person using his literate programming scheme. Cweb, donald knuths favourite programming language this site also has examples of people using cweb to write literate programs. Literate programming center for the study of language and information publication lecture notes, band 27. Though rarely mentioned, sloppy coding often costs companies a great deal in terms of time and money.
Jupyter, a notebook in your web browser that lets you embed python, julia or r. Literate programming is a methodology that combines a programming language with a documentation language, thereby making programs more robust, more portable, more easily maintained, and arguably more fun to write than programs that are written only in a highlevel language. The idea of literate programming is an combination of several ideas including idea of hypertext and the idea of content management applied to program sources. Knuth computer science department, stanford university, stanford, ca 94305, usa the author and his associates have been experimenting for the past several years with a program ming language and documentation system called web. Literate programming with and for r ross ihaka december, 15, 2011 1 introduction in a 1984 paper 4, donald knuth introduced the concept of literate program ming. Learn about literate programming using the cweb tool for software development. Orgmodes documentation on literate programming, for more examples of things you can do with orgmode. Knuth was written in web, the original literate programming system, based on dec pdp10 pascal, while an application. Literate programming is a methodology that combines a programming language. Haskell is one of the few languages that provides native features to support literate programming.
Knuths literate programming knut84 bent86a bent86b is one approach for shifting the programmers focus to include other humans as code consumers. The philosophy of literate programming is explained fully in the book literate programming, which also contains an extensive bibliography of the subject. Theres somewhat more to knuth ian style literate programming than that. Ive really become enamored with the idea of literate programming but figured that the best way to reintroduce it to others is the same way knuth did with examples what does it look like to work this way. Jan 08, 2019 literate is a tool for creating literate programs. Fosdem 2017 nightly slides and video firefox nightly news mozilla. Is not based on any specific dtd or programming language, but instead uses processing instructions for. Have there been any new developments on the literate programming clojure front, in terms of tools that leverage existing build tools.
Fosdem 2017 nightly slides and video firefox nightly news. Donald knuth, who is no small name in computing, proposes a new. Literate programming can be more selfcontained and more useful for those learning new methodologies and new programming techniques. Jun 06, 2016 71 thoughts on learn to program with literate programming faeroe reinard says. The bottom line on knuths literate programming idea. In literate programming the documentation is written within the source les and are separated from the programming code with a special notation. Literate programming is an approach to programming introduced by donald knuth in which a program is given as an explanation of the program logic in.
We should be seeking a way to be rid of cold comments and dead documentation entirely. The wikipedia page isnt bad i actually disagree with knuth, in that lp failed to take off because lp was papering over the deficiencies in the programming languages of the time, which rigidly told you a lot about how your program must be written to make them happy, and required a lot of particular structure. One speculation for the reason behind knuth s pushing of lp is that according to stanfords intellectual property policy, stanford would have owned all of knuth s code, but not his published writing. Code can be generated compiled from nonsequential presentation and extracted from the multiple sources where it is potentially intermixed with the documentation and various other notes in wiki style. The wikipedia page isnt bad i actually disagree with knuth, in that lp failed to take off because lp was papering over the deficiencies in the programming languages of the time, which rigidly told you a lot about how your program must be written to make them happy, and required a lot of particular structure and lots of. A literate programming language is intended to improve the documentation abilities of the native programming language. Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced by donald knuth in which a computer program is given an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as english, interspersed with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which compilable source code can be generated the literate programming paradigm, as conceived by knuth. This is a note about issues and problems in the discipline called literate programming. Always looking for effective ways to write and maintain code over time.
More than 30 example cweb programs can be found in the stanford graphbase. And ive made several additional programs available for downloading. Doug, 261 mossberg, walt, 94 mowani, rajeev, 38 mozilla firefox, 204, 206, 207 8, 209. Knuth was written in web, the original literate programming system. And of course the original knuthplass algorithm is made for some static text which is. When you write a computer program, you have to present the code to the computer in a certain order, or else it doesnt work.