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Literate Programming Alive

Literate Programming
KindPaper
Published1984
StatusAlive
AuthorsDonald Knuth
FieldProgramming languages
Sourcewww.literateprogramming.com ↗

Programs as literature — WEB's weave-and-tangle idea that code should be written for humans first and compiled second. TeX's source is its proof of concept.

Created by Donald Knuth

Knuth's 1984 Computer Journal paper presented WEB — a system where programs and their documentation are one source, woven into typeset exposition for humans and tangled into compilable code for machines. The program explains itself as it computes.

TeX and METAFONT were written in WEB as demonstration — Knuth's own sources remain the literate-programming canon. The idea influenced notebook interfaces (Jupyter, R Markdown) more than mainstream programming, but the principle — code is communication — is now standard dogma.

Sources

  1. literateprogramming.com/knuthweb.pdf
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming
  3. academic.oup.com/comjnl/article/27/2/97/343244