On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Eli Barzilay <e...@barzilay.org> wrote:
> Note that what Haskell does is *semi*-literate-programming, something > that has little to do with literate programming. Neil Van Dyke is > working on a tool that is going to be more like > semi-literate-programming. > > I understand that literate programming in the Knuth-defined sense allows separation of function bodies into smaller chunks, and allows complete freedom over organization. In a language like Racket where function definitions can be in any order, you have pretty good flexibility to organize your code top-down or bottom-up, moving things where it makes sense to build an explanation. So the main thing you lose with a lighterweight tool is the ability to break up functions into smaller pieces. Racket functions are often so small, that's not a huge limitation. So yes, lp is more powerful, but just being able to invert the relative importance of documentation vs code and read the file both ways in a linear top-to-bottom fashion is valuable. semi-literate-programming seems an apt name. I don't think Javadoc would even qualify for that label though. In my mind, "semi-literate" at least implies a focus on building a narrative exposition of why the functions work the way they do, not just API documentation.
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