literate-programming

tags :: R:tech

Author: Donald Knuth

• Consider programs as works of literature
• Instead of focusing on instructing a computer what to do, focus on explaining to humans what we want a computer to do
• Programmer as an essayist; focused on excellence and style

WEB system

• Programming language and suite of programs developed in Stanford

• Embodies literate programming philosophies

• Imagining and representing a program as a “web” of ideas

• WEB is inherently bilingual, and a combination of 2 pieces

  • A document formatting language (in this case, TEX)
  • A programming language (in this case, PASCAL)

• A WEB program serves as source code for two different system routines
  • Weaving - producesdocs describing the program clearly
  • Tangling - produces machine executable program