On: Ask HN: Why did literate programming not catch on?

[informatimago]

Since you are doing stage 1 and 2 on a computer system, you could go on, and write the code of stage 3 in that very same wiki too!

Then write a spider to scan this wiki, extract the code blocks, and assemble a compilable program, and you're done, wiki literate programming!

[skia → informatimago]

A wiki is a terrible instrument for writing software documentation. For example, there is no revision control to track changes as required by by changes in the code, there is much duplication. I could go on, and on, why a wiki is not optimal for any documentation associated to a software project.

Better to use a system like DITA or dockbook.

[minopret → skia]

Which wiki engine do you have in mind? There certainly is revision control in MediaWiki, Confluence, and others. Granted, I wouldn't use those in place of a source code revision control system such as git. There are generally no "annotate"/"blame" or "pickaxe" features. I would agree with writing something code-friendly in the first place, examples of which would include DocBook and Restructured Text.

[greenyoda → minopret]

There's at least one wiki that's built on top of Git:

https://github.com/gollum/gollum

[mrob → greenyoda]

There's also Gitit, which supports multiple VCSs including git:

https://github.com/jgm/gitit