Re:Literate programming: Knuth is doing it wrong (2014)
by akkartik on Sunday January 09, 2022 @09:21AM
(#29863423)
Jonesforth is awesome. But it is not LP.
Semi-literate systems are not LP.
The essence of LP is to not be constrained by some language's compiler when deciding how to explain a system to another person.
Now, lots of languages today are nice enough that you can work within them and still do LP. So it is certainly possible for a program written in a semi-literate system to be LP. But that is a property of the _program_, not "Literate Haskell" or whatever.
Jonesforth is written in Assembly. Assembly is not nice enough to write a Literate program in directly.
It is certainly possible to write beautiful programs without LP. But I think LP is a valuable idea that we should at least understand the boundaries of. If you think Jonesforth is LP, you don't understand LP.
Semi-literate systems are not LP.
The essence of LP is to not be constrained by some language's compiler when deciding how to explain a system to another person.
Now, lots of languages today are nice enough that you can work within them and still do LP. So it is certainly possible for a program written in a semi-literate system to be LP. But that is a property of the _program_, not "Literate Haskell" or whatever.
Jonesforth is written in Assembly. Assembly is not nice enough to write a Literate program in directly.
It is certainly possible to write beautiful programs without LP. But I think LP is a valuable idea that we should at least understand the boundaries of. If you think Jonesforth is LP, you don't understand LP.