On Thu, 27 May 2010 09:47:58 -0400
Tim Daly <d...@axiom-developer.org> wrote:
> Bill Hart, from the Sage project, said:
> "Another thing I've been enjoying lately is literate
> programming. Amazingly it turns out to be faster to
> write a literate program than an ordinary program
> because debugging takes almost no time."
> (http://axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/documentation.html)
>
> so on balance it might be ~1.5 rather than 3. Who knows?
Since the discussion of literate programming has continued, I'll chip
in and say that I think Tim has understated the case for it, and Bill
mentions part of why that is.
Literate programming isn't about creating a program that can live
forever; it's about communicating the workings of the program to
readers. If your readers are people decades in the future, then your
result is programs that live forever. If your readers are everyone
else who can see the source, then your result is programs that are
easy for others to understand and extend. If your reader is you, as
you write the program, then your result is programs that have fewer
bugs in their first incarnation - which is the point Bill brought up.
Chances are, you don't know who the readers of your program are going
to be, so you can potentially get all those benefits.
<mike
P.S. Of course, you don't have to use literate programming to get two
of these results: Unix is 40 years old, and probably not the
oldest code in production; NASA and the airline industry
regularly turn out code that's got bug counts comparable to the
best literate programs.
--
Mike Meyer <m...@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.
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