>> Clojure is being reworked into literate form already
Proof of this claim?
On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 7:32 PM, Gregg Reynolds <d...@mobileink.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 2:22 PM, Tim Daly <d...@axiom-developer.org> wrote:
>
>> Gregg,
>>
>> > My original comment on litprog ("bad bad bad") was admittedly a little
>> > strong. I think its bad for some things, fine for others. And it's
>> > possible litprog conventions will evolve to address the problems some
>> of us
>> > see with using it for programming in the large etc.
>>
>> Could you explain what "some of the problems some of us see with using
>> it for programming in the large" might be? It is hard to refute
>> "bad bad bad" and other assertions without specific examples.
>>
>
> Hi Tim,
>
> I'm afraid it may take me a few days to find the time to respond
> properly. In the meantime, aside from some of the responses in this
> thread, see
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2545136/is-literate-programming-dead .
>
> And here's a bit from Knuth (
> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/lp.html):
>
> "Literate programming <http://www.literateprogramming.com> 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 high-level language."
>
> "[T]hereby"??? This is an obvious non-sequitur. To my knowledge neither
> Knuth nor anybody else has ever produced a shred of evidence in support of
> this kind of claim. Probably because it is false on the face of it. Note
> the implicit claim, that litprog is an "effective methodology" that, when
> followed, "thereby" results in all sorts of smooth buttery goodness
> (compare "effective procedure"). But litprog is a norm or style, not a
> methodology. It provides no rules (methods) that all by themselves bestow
> excellence on your text. You can write crappy literate programs.
>
> He continues: "The main idea is to treat a program as a piece of
> literature, addressed to human beings rather than to a computer." *Rather*
> than to a computer? I think not; nobody is interested in programs,
> literate or not, that computers do not understand. Furthermore, program
> text is, has always been, and always will be a form of literary text, by
> definition. Knuth's use of the term "literate programming" is a mere
> rhetorical trick since it (falsely) implies that programming that does not
> conform to his (very personal) notion of what counts as literate is ipso
> facto illiterate.
>
> Ross Williams (funnel web guy) (from http://www.literateprogramming.com/):
>
> "A traditional computer program consists of a text file containing program
> code. Scattered in amongst the program code are comments which describe the
> various parts of the code...In literate programming the emphasis is
> reversed. Instead of writing code containing documentation, the literate
> programmer writes documentation containing code."
>
> I consider this a major part of what "classic litprog" means, and I think
> it is preposterous, to be honest. Just think of code and documentation as
> text and commentary. One writes commentary about texts, not the other way
> around.
>
> Of course, this is not necessarily what everybody has in mind when they
> hear "literate programming". In fact I gather it is not uncommon for
> people to use "literate programming" to refer to tools that merely support
> some kind of structured documentation syntax mixed in with code together
> with some kind of tools to support fancy typesetting. On that view
> javadocs counts as literate programming. But I think that's a confusing
> abuse of terminology, since that isn't what litprog originally meant.
>
> There's a lot more to be said about it, of course, but that'll have to do
> for now.
>
> And on the other hand, I'm entirely pragmatic about this stuff. If
> something works and people use it, who am I to argue? I just don't think
> it (classic litprog) works, at least not for certain important classes of
> problem (programming in the large, with distributed very heterogenous
> groups of programmers, etc.) But there are lots of good docs tools that
> draw inspiration and techniques from classic litprog even if they
> themselves don't fit the profile precisley.
>
>
>> Axiom (1.2 million lines of lisp) is being rewritten into a literate
>> program. So far I can't think of a problem. Clojure is being reworked
>> into literate form already
>
>
> That's news to me. Are you saying the core Clojure team is rewriting
> Clojure in *classic* litprog style? That would flabber my gast, to put it
> mildly.
>
> -Gregg
>
>
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