On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:15 AM, bill lam <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Sean Stickle wrote: > > I'm a fan of writing documentation that happens to contain code than > writing > > code that happens to contain documentation. Literate programming has > > certainly helped me write and maintain a lot of software over the years > > where I need to communicate the intent of the whole system to other > people. > > --Sean > Does literate programming work with debugger? > > Literate Programming is one of those techniques that has not been integrated into tools very well (apart from Haskell). And it can be a challenge to use when working in a team :-} It works very well if you use text editors and command line tools when programming. But an IDE usually kills its usefulness, since there is so little support. There are a few editors with good support (like Leo), but nothing on the scale of Eclipse et al. (Although I have to admit, I haven't searched for a long while.) It's one of these Don Knuth technologies that has enormous potential. But he's not really that interested in producing an end product, he leaves that to others. I once read an interview, where he expressed surprise (and dismay) that people were just using TeX straight, instead of making something at a higher level utilising TeX underneath (things have moved on slightly, but not really very much). I got the impression that he likes coming up with enabling technology, hoping that others will take it on and make something real out of it. Robby ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
