
Literate programming: Knuth is doing it wrong - eadmund
http://akkartik.name/post/literate-programming
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rattaz
Hi!

Don't waste time on this. It is obvious rubbish. I took the time to follow
these first sentences and it led to wasted time. I'm tempted to build a robot
to filter this shite out.

"When I look around at the legacy of literate programming, systems to do so-
called semi- or quasi-literate programming dominate. These are systems that
focus on generating beautifully typeset documentation without allowing the
author to arbitrarily order code."

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jmiserez
What is wrong with that sentence? The article looks fine to me.

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perl4ever
Possibly that CWEB _did_ allow arbitrarily re-ordered code, so it seems
strained to criticize Knuth on that basis?

The problem I always saw with it is that _no_ ordering is necessarily perfect
- there might be different optimums for different purposes.

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lallysingh
Did Knuth use the feature?

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perl4ever
I find it interesting that some people do ask themselves if "literate
programming" should require _reading_ a lot of code...but then dismiss it.

Maybe it does. As I think about it, when I was first programming, one of the
things that I and other people did in those days was to type programs in from
magazines. Another influence on me was taking code in one language or for one
system and porting it to another. And I certainly read plenty of code by my
co-workers during the years I worked as a programmer.

Maybe reading a great deal is and always has been required to be a decent
writer. No idea if Knuth has or does.

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mastrsushi
How do posts like this even make it upstream? There's a summer effect going
on, this site's getting infiltrated by brain dead pop science morons.

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acqq
(2014)

