Literate programming, a practioners view tex users group. Knuth in the early 1980s, as a natural sequel to the concept of structured programming that had caused a revolution in the world of software development about a decade earlier. 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, 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. 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. Jan 08, 2019 literate is a tool for creating literate programs. 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. Roberts this report is based on a course of the same name given at stanford university during autumn quarter, 1987. Orgmodes documentation on literate programming, for more examples of things you can do with orgmode. 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. Ive been playing with various ways of doing literate programming in python. Literate programming wikimili, the free encyclopedia. Many examples are given, including excerpts from the programs for tex and metafont. As this manual aims to supply all information possibly relevant to a wide variety of.
For more information on literate programming, the reader is directed to knuth s early founding work knuth83 and knuth84. This article introduces litprog, demonstrates what a literate program looks like, and describes the litprog tool xmlp, which can be used to literately develop program sources or other control file sources whose content is xml or text. Acrobat reader view, navigate, and print pdf portable document format files. Learner should keep switching between pv and programming workspace to write the solution and utilize program visualization at once. I think you misunderstand knuth s concept of literate programming. I think you misunderstand knuths concept of literate programming. Literate programming, as well as comments in general, is not about what your code is doing. Nuweb works with any programming language and latex. 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, interspersed with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which a compilable source code can be generated the literate programming paradigm, as conceived by knuth, represents a move away from. Literate programming is also the name of donknuths book isbn one speculation for the reason behind knuth s pushing of lp is that according to stanfords. The code segments are arranged not according to execution order or the logical structure of the.
Most literate programmers consider systems that do not reorder code to. Compared to noweb, anansis primary benefits are the ability to include separate files, and to automatically generate an entire directory tree from a project without having to enumerate each output. All programmers today claim to understand the importance of readable code, and slogans like programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute are occasionally heard from several quarters. In literate programming, the documentation and program are mixed in the same file or files. Funnelweb is a production quality tool that was specifically engineered for practical everyday use.
Literate programming is an approach to programming introduced by donald knuth as an alternative to the structured programming paradigm of the 1970s. Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced by donald knuth in which a. It is all about why and how, and this essential information is almost always missing without a proper literate programming. Macros in a literate source file are simply titlelike or explanatory phrases in a human language that describe human. Jun 06, 2016 learn to program with literate programming. For more recent information refer to smith91, which provides a comprehensive bibliography up to 1990. Knuth had privately used a literate programming system called doc as early as the snippets of the literate wc above show how an explanation of the program and its source code are interwoven. We would argue that such mechanism is discouraging for learners because, in most. Most literate programmers consider systems that do not reorder code to not be true literate programming systems. Despite some obvious advantages apparent to anyone who has struggled to under. Funnelweb is a powerful literateprogramming macro preprocessor that enables you to weave programs and documentation together. This book is the definitive users guide and reference manual for the cweb system.
The vision when i wrote my first program, the only reader i had in mind was the computer that ran it. In his article literate programming, originally published in the computer journal may 1984 and reproduced in a sametitled book, knuth explained the idea that led to web. The code then follows the structure of the documentation. Knuth 1983 developed the web literateprogramming softw are, which provided the means to write structured documentation within the source code and to generate dynamic documentation. Mathematical writingissues of technical writing and the effective presentation of mathematics and computer science. If you are writing a literate program, you are trying to communicate to another human separated in space and time. In embedded documentation, the documentation is embedded in the source of the program. Is not based on any specific dtd or programming language, but instead uses processing instructions for processing the literate programs. Literate programming published in computer journal british computer society publication but it was clouded by knuth excessive attention to typography.
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. Center for the study of language and literate programming is a methodology that combines a programming. Knuths premise is that the best programs are meant for people as well. Donald knuth introduced literate programming in 1984 as an alternative perspective on the motivation of the programmer. An absolutely fundamental concept of literate programming is that the program is sequenced for the human reader and not for the compiler.
Consequently, when used as a supplementary tool in programming laboratory session, a dedicated programming workspace is still required for writing the code. Literate programming is a methodology that combines a programming language. Nope, javadoc has nothing to do with knuths literate programming. 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. Donald knuths original paper, where he coined the term literate programming. Miktex tex is a typesetting system written by donald knuth, who says that it is intended for the creation of beautiful books and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics. In a literate haskell program, there are two ways to distinguish between code and noncode portions. In 1984, knuth introduced the idea of literate programming. Van wyk programming i n may and june 1986, programming pearls took up literate programming, an approach to programming espoused by donald knuth. Provide tools to support donald knuths literate programming using xml instead of tex. Learn to program with literate programming hackaday. Contribute to tangentforkscweb development by creating an account on github.
Literate programming is also the name of donknuths book isbn one speculation for the reason behind knuths pushing of. I like noweb, but i have two main problems with it. 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. Beautifully typeset your code so one can curl up in bed to read it like a novel. 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. Reams pythonbased outliningeditorbrowser compatible with cweb and other literate programming tools. I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of. 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. Literate programming is also the name of donknuths book isbn one speculation for the reason behind knuths pushing of lp is that according to stanfords. Literate programming, language independent literate programming, text processing independent literate programming, multi file multimodule literate programming, documentation, coding style. Literate programming allows both computer code and documentation to be generated from a single unified source. Donald knuth created the web system of literate programming when.
Haskell is one of the few languages that provides native features to support literate programming. Dynamic documentation and literate programming introduction. 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. The program that donald knuth used to implement his idea of literate programming was called web, which he introduced in 1981.
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. It was proposed by donald knuth in 1984 in his article donald knuth. In literate programming, the generated documentation can explain the code or expound on the code in any order the writer feels to be natural. Litprog literate programming is a technique created by donald knuth to make computer programs readable and maintainable. Knuth s premise is that the best programs are meant for people as well as machines. Literate programming is a style of programming invented by donald knuth, where the main idea is that a programs. Instead of code files with scattered remarks, knuths system which he called web, because the pieces of the program were woven together made the document the firstclass citizen, with the code interpolated as needed for the sake of explanation.
Whats the best way to do literate programming in python. Donald knuth introduced the concept of literate programming as a method to im prove the quality of. Order your code for others to read, not for the compiler. In literate programming, the generated documentation can explain the code or. Many people make the mistake of thinking that literate programming is just better documentation. Knuth switched to cweb long ago, its not about fixing pascal deficiencies.
Combining program visualization with programming workspace to. I have been using the web style of literate programming since my first efforts to port tex to the. Literate programming is also the name of donknuths book isbn 0937073814 which describes the methodology. In literate programming, computer code is embedded within the programs documentation as opposed to the documentation being embedded within the computer code. Provide tools to support donald knuth s literate programming using xml instead of tex. The main idea is to treat a program as a piece of literature, addressed. Knuth, literate programming, the computer journal, volume 27, issue 2, 1984, pages 97111. Compared to noweb, anansis primary benefits are the ability to include separate files, and to automatically generate an entire directory tree from a. More comments about cweb can be found in daniel malls website for literate programming. Dition, the manual for cweb is published as a book entitled. Dec, 2018 classic essays on improving the state of programming literature. In haskell, a literate program is one with the suffix.
Cweb, donald knuths favourite programming language this site also has examples of people using cweb to write literate programs. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. The idea was that a programmer wrote one document, the web file, that combined documentation with code. The structured programming revolution of the early. Rambutan is a literate programming system for java, quite similar to cweb and the original web system. 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. For more information on literate programming, the reader is directed to knuths early founding work knuth83 and knuth84. Knuth makes some pretty large claims about literate programming, but i didnt find the above paper to be very compelling. These files do not have to contain any special markup, so i can use leo for myself without any need for others in the team to. Many examples are given, including excerpts from the programs for tex. If youre interested, you should read knuths paper pdf describing literate programming.