Next: notation-tut Prev: Top Up: Top Top: Top

0.1. Literate programming, Glasgow style

Literate programming is a style that tries to maximise humans' understanding of programs by full-scale use the tools of the description trade (typesetting, indexing, etc.) to say what a program does and how it works. The power of literate programming is in the synergy between writing code and documentation in a unified framework.

So, for example, in Knuth's original WEB system [ToDo: add reference(s)] "code" and "text" may be intermingled as much as you like, the pieces of "code" may appear in any order (even though it's only glorified Pascal), and quite substantial cross-referencing and indexing (not to mention TeX-based typesetting) is built in. Programs are just documents for people to read and enjoy which happen to have machine-manipulable code "buried" in them.

Menu

Glasgow-objectives
Objectives of our Glasgow system.
Glasgow-NON-objectives
NON-Objectives of our system.
Other-Glasgow-features
Other features of our Glasgow system.
Glasgow-NON-features
Shortcomings of our system.