Talk:Literate programming

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): User:Pranavnawathe (article contribs).

Remove Syntax Highlighting?

As noticed by 206.47.249.252, the source code listed is not quite C, as promised to the syntax highlighter. It's unlikely the highlighter will ever support something like lang="noweb#c", so it may be best to just use "<pre>" or custom formatting instead. But the former looks plain and the latter is labor intensive... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daggerbox (talk • contribs) 02:20, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Who uses literate programming?

The article would be improved if it contained a list of software programs that have been written in a literate programming style. From what I gather, this is still a small number, so a list would not be out of place. I know of TeX (which was even published as a book TeX: The Program) and METAFONT by Knuth, and I've heard about Axiom, but are there any ("big") programs or software projects written in literate programming? 59.92.198.129 (talk) 07:32, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. I glanced at the official discussion group for Literate Programming, which is now a Google Group. These discussions might be useful to read, in order to gain further insight regarding your question, and corresponding inclusion in the article, What is the future of literate programming? (July 2011) and Is Literate Programming useful? (March 2011). Note that comp.programming.literate has been active through October 2012. --FeralOink (talk) 15:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Removed tagging.

Nothing here to make clear what action to take in nearly a year so removed. Please replace if you can give specfics. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 15:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

EHC/ UHC and Web68 update

I updated external references but tried to include external links in my revision comment. Guess what: It didn't work!

This is what my edit was: I revised URLs due to the transition of EHC content to UHC per the UHC Wiki Project News, (Sept 2010). I also removed red link/ non-existent wikilinks. Also, I updated and cited properly, the Web68 reference. --FeralOink (talk) 14:41, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Project Jupyter needs adding

Project Jupyter should probably be added to the list of examples.

Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 22:50, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What horrible thing.

The article is totally missing any discussion of the failings and shortfalls of WEB or even Literate Programming as concept. Instead it reads as The Gospel according to Saint Knuth. The fact that even proponents of this abortive concept struggle to find examples of relevant software written in it (other than by Knuth himself) should alert to the many reasons that make it next to useless for any proper software project outside of the software lab of Knuth & His Acolytes. Allow me to mention a few: Substituting 'natural language' for properly defined programming languages can only lead to increased ambiguity, not less; proficient programmers should have no difficulty conveying (and understanding) meaning through properly written code in a well-known programming language; this is especially true for the most complex parts of algorithms (ie, where it matters most), and even the WEB examples provided for Unix's 'wc' program (a relatively simple application) amount to a load of comments around blocks of traditional code that carry out the actual work; ie, it increases verbosity ungainfully.

I should probably work these objections into the article myself, but i can't be bothered. If this Literate Programming nonsense mattered to anyone other than Knuth's uncritical followers, the article would already have plenty mention of these issues, and others. (By the way, this Knuth fellow is the guy who, not so long ago, lambasted the hell out of microprocessor designers for 'persisting' in making multicore architectures, claiming that it is incumbent upon them to build fast single-threaded processors instead of trying to 'force' programmers to learn parallel programming. WTF?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.168.138.50 (talk) 20:52, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to have strong opinions on the topic (and many others).

To add anything to this article (or any others), you will need reliable sources. - SummerPhD^v2.0 03:20, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

From your offensive language about Knuth, on can infer that you certainly know nothing about computer science, and are a total ignorant about Knuth's seminal work.

You have no idea of what a robust program is, nor what a good style is.

Do not confuse a simple example, not a good one, with the literate style, it is essential to write real maintainable software. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.233.107.221 (talk) 22:19, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Haskell was designed to write literate programs

Haskell is a very formal language, it supports algebraic data types and is a purely declarative language. A programmer use algebraic laws to transform code into a more efficient equivalent one. For that reason I rewrote that point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.233.107.221 (talk) 22:23, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]