This is a note about issues and problems in the discipline called literate programming. Jun 26, 20 timothy daly axiom is an open source computer algebra system written mostly in common lisp. Wikipedia, as of june 2006, introduces the concept of literate programming in the following way. Donald knuth introduced literate programming in 1984 as an alternative perspective on the motivation of the programmer. Orgmodes documentation on literate programming, for more examples of things you can do with orgmode. Such an environment reverses the notion of including documentation, in the form of comments, within the code, to one where the code is embedded within a programs description. The art of computer programming, his novel surreal numbers, his.
Literate programming, a technique for coding software systems that promotes readability and comprehension, is examined in detail. Literate programming lecture notes knuth, donald e. You dont read documentation like a novel, cover to cover. Literate programming is a way of developing software where documentation comes first, then the coding. He is the author of the tex typesetting system as well as the art of computer programming and a. Literate statistical programming an introduction using r. Together with open image in new window donald knuth developed a new way to document programs. In essence, this is the purpose of literate programming lp for short. 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. 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. Dvlabel generating tex source code for the typesetting of labels. This technique is less well known then its deserve. Download a free cweb distribution for microsoft windows.
The philosophy of literate programming is explained fully in the book literate programming, which also contains an extensive bibliography of the subject. He is the author of the tex typesetting system as well as the art of computer programming and a number of deep, insightful papers and books. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on. In my experience, software created with literate programming has turned. 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. Whats the best way to do literate programming in python. Though rarely mentioned, sloppy coding often costs companies a great deal in terms of time and money. Knuth began in 1962 to prepare textbooks about programming techniques, and this work evolved into a projected sevenvolume series entitled the art of computer programming. In 1993 he became professor emeritus of the art of computer programming. Webs design encourages writing programs in small chunks which knuth called modules he also.
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. The author and his associates have been experimenting for the past several years with a programming language and documentation. Knuth posted 25 jan 2000 by advogato this week, advogato had the pleasure and honor of interviewing prof. 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. In a literate haskell program, there are two ways to distinguish between code and noncode portions. A literate programming language is intended to improve the documentation abilities of the native programming language. It is all about why and how, and this essential information is almost always missing without a proper literate programming.
Literate programming is also the name of donknuths book isbn 0937073814 which describes the methodology. The bottom line on knuths literate programming idea. Some thirty years ago donald knuth, a computer scientist, proposed literate programming as a better way of organizing narrative and code 1984. 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. The visual appearance of the software source code would be. Literate programming is a methodology that combines a programming language. This anthology of essays from donald knuth, the father of computer science, andthe 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. Many examples are given, including excerpts from the programs for tex and metafont. 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. 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. Many people make the mistake of thinking that literate programming is just better documentation. Ive been playing with various ways of doing literate programming in python. 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.
As originally conceived by don knuth, literate programming involves pretty printing of various view of code and documentation from a single source. And ive made several additional programs available for downloading. 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. Donald knuth chess master playing at adobe systems 7497. More than 30 example cweb programs can be found in the stanford graphbase. 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. The idea was that a programmer wrote one document, the web file, that combined documentation with code. It was proposed by donald knuth in 1984 in his article donald knuth.
Donald knuths original paper, where he coined the term literate programming. He argued that there needed to be a change in the way that programmers view the way they work. Literate programming article about literate programming. Yet i think that a few programs, such as adobe photoshop, will always be. Mar 03, 2017 literate data analysis with stata and markdown. Literate programming article about literate programming by. Learn to program with literate programming hackaday. Order your code for others to read, not for the compiler. For more information on literate programming, the reader is directed to knuths early founding work knuth83 and knuth84. Web is a software system that facilitates the creation of readable programs. Literate programming is the writing of computer programs primarily for human beings to read, similar to a work of literature.
Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do. More comments about cweb can be found in daniel malls website for literate programming. Literate programming the computer journal oxford academic. The bottom line on knuth s literate programming idea.
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. But knuth s web and cweb are the only major literate programming tools that i know about that actively typeset the code. Many examples are given, including excerpts from the programs for tex. 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. The literate programming technique is described by donald knuth in \ literate programming and \the cweb system for structured documentation. 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. Beautifully typeset your code so one can curl up in bed to read it like a novel.
In 1984, knuth introduced the idea of literate programming. Back in 1984, donald knuth wrote let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. If you are writing a literate program, you are trying to communicate to another human separated in space and time. 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. Provide tools to support donald knuth s literate programming using xml instead of tex. One writes the documentation of a code snippet, and then writes the implementation of the snippet. Literate programming is the combination of documentation and source code together in a fashion suited for reading by human beings.
Acrobat reader view, navigate, and print pdf portable document format files. Get your kindle here, or download a free kindle reading app. Cweb, donald knuths favourite programming language this site also has examples of people using cweb to write literate programs. As one of the original authors at ibm research i wrote a fair amount of code. 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. 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 program ming language and documentation system called web. Whats the best way to do literate programming in python on. Jan 08, 2019 literate is a tool for creating literate programs. Learn about literate programming using the cweb tool for software development. To listen to more of donald knuths stories, go to the playlist. Literate programming adds new dimensions to a software.
Jun 06, 2016 71 thoughts on learn to program with literate programming faeroe reinard says. I reproducible research rr i replicable science rs i reproducible data analysis rda i dynamic data analysis i dynamic report generation i literate datastatistical analysis lsp and rda are here used interchangeably. 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. Jul 07, 2016 i think the issue is treating knuth s literate programming examples as received wisdom, or the pinnacle of the form, rather than as a pioneering effort by someone very talented, but done without the benefit of a developed culture around the practice. He argues that when we write a program we are not just providing instructions for the computer to complete a task, but also communicating to other human beings exactly what it is we are trying to do. This paper presents web by example, and discusses why the new system appears to be an improvement over previous ones. He has supervised the dissertations of 28 students. Adobe acrobat reader and miktex are available for free. 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. Web was adapted to c by silvio levy in 1987, and since then both knuth and levy have revised. But knuths web and cweb are the only major literate programming tools that i know about that actively typeset the code.
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. Haskell is one of the few languages that provides native features to support literate programming. As far as i know, knuth is the only person using his literate programming scheme. Literate statistical programming the term has many aliases, including.
When you write a computer program, you have to present the code to the computer in a certain order, or else it doesnt work. For more recent information refer to smith91, which provides a comprehensive bibliography up to 1990. Feb 23, 2019 download nuweb for literate programming for free. Timothy daly axiom is an open source computer algebra system written mostly in common lisp. As one of the original authors at ibm research i wrote a. 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.
Is not based on any specific dtd or programming language, but instead uses processing instructions for processing the literate programs. 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. Andrew binstock and donald knuth converse on the success of open source, the. I like noweb, but i have two main problems with it. Provide tools to support donald knuths literate programming using xml instead of tex. Mar 01, 1992 this is a collection of material by knuth about the philosophy and practice of literate programming, his idea of programs as literature. 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.
The main idea is to treat a program as a piece of literature, addressed. Donald knuth, author of the art of computer programming and the creator of tex, is a strong believer in documenting computer programs. In haskell, a literate program is one with the suffix. Though rarely mentioned, sloppy coding often costs companies a great deal in terms of time. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we. 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. The term literate programming was coined by knuth in his paper from 1984, in which also a particular tool for literate programming was introduced. Here i describe the system i use and make a bit advertisement for this fantastic programming style. Knuth, literate programming, the computer journal, volume 27, issue 2, 1984. For more information on literate programming, the reader is directed to knuth s early founding work knuth83 and knuth84. He is the author of the tex typesetting sys tem as well as the art of computer.
I agree that the order imposed by the compiler is not always best, but different readers have different purposes. Theres a big todoabout adobe indesign, which finally. Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programming. I used literate programming consequently for all my programs. The author and his associates have been experimenting for the past several years with a programming language and documentation system called web. In doing so, literate programming facilitates the devel. Meanwhile, the folks using waits couldnt get enough machine cycles. Literate programming, as well as comments in general, is not about what your code is doing.
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