Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[Chad Brown]

I believe that Cweb/Ctangle were `engineering tradeoffs' -- i.e.
concessions to the large number of people who didn't care about the
theory or the practice of programming and just wanted to use TeX
(mostly AMSTeX) on whatever new system their math/physics department
happened to buy that year.

On Apr 10, 2009, at 4:50 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've been thinking about 'well documented programs' and come across
>> the 'noweb' program.
>> Do you have any experience with literal programming and,
>> particularly, noweb?
>> (I noticed at least rsc seems to have played with it back in the year
>> 2000. He programmed some scripts to use the system in Plan9...)
>>
>> Thanks
>> Ruda
>>
>
> Just curious... what's the relation to Cweb and Ctangle (the ones
> Knuth uses)?
>
> From what I've heard of those (even from Knuth himself) is that
> they're too ugly to use very much, and fits well with Knuth's style,
> which is mostly the "giant blob of code" style.

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

I implemented a mkernel using noweb. In the end, I think it's harder  
to follow than placing the code and doc appart. Probably a religious  
issue.

El 11/04/2009, a las 0:43, rudolf.sykora@gmail.com escribió:

> Hello,
>
> I've been thinking about 'well documented programs' and come across
> the 'noweb' program.
> Do you have any experience with literal programming and,  
> particularly, noweb?
> (I noticed at least rsc seems to have played with it back in the year
> 2000. He programmed some scripts to use the system in Plan9...)
>
> Thanks
> Ruda
>
> [/mail/box/nemo/msgs/200904/37939]

[9fans] noweb and literal programming

[Rudolf Sykora]

Hello,

I've been thinking about 'well documented programs' and come across
the 'noweb' program.
Do you have any experience with literal programming and, particularly, noweb?
(I noticed at least rsc seems to have played with it back in the year
2000. He programmed some scripts to use the system in Plan9...)

Thanks
Ruda

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[J.R. Mauro]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been thinking about 'well documented programs' and come across
> the 'noweb' program.
> Do you have any experience with literal programming and, particularly, noweb?
> (I noticed at least rsc seems to have played with it back in the year
> 2000. He programmed some scripts to use the system in Plan9...)
>
> Thanks
> Ruda
>

Just curious... what's the relation to Cweb and Ctangle (the ones Knuth uses)?

>From what I've heard of those (even from Knuth himself) is that
they're too ugly to use very much, and fits well with Knuth's style,
which is mostly the "giant blob of code" style.

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[Rudolf Sykora]

> Just curious... what's the relation to Cweb and Ctangle (the ones Knuth uses)?
>
> From what I've heard of those (even from Knuth himself) is that
> they're too ugly to use very much, and fits well with Knuth's style,
> which is mostly the "giant blob of code" style.

As far as I can tell, cweb (ctangle, cweave) is the original Knuth's
web language adjusted for the C language (the very original was
written to work with pascal).
These 'ful-featured' webs didn't succeed, people found it somewhat complicated.
In contrast, noweb tried to be simpler, with no tight connection to
the language used (any language can be used) and no tight connection
to the formatter. It has less features but this can be considered an
advantage.

Ruda

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[tlaronde]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 04:53:44PM +0200, Rudolf Sykora wrote:
> In contrast, noweb tried to be simpler, with no tight connection to
> the language used (any language can be used) and no tight connection
> to the formatter.

and no tight connection with any usage either.

[Sorry, couldn't resist since "CWEB is hard" can be only sustained by
people who don't use it.]

Will be quiet now (since having work using CWEB).
--
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                 http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89  250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[Robert Raschke]

On 4/10/09, Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.sykora@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been thinking about 'well documented programs' and come across
> the 'noweb' program.
> Do you have any experience with literal programming and, particularly,
> noweb?
> (I noticed at least rsc seems to have played with it back in the year
> 2000. He programmed some scripts to use the system in Plan9...)
>
> Thanks
> Ruda
>

Over the years I have used CWEB, Spiderweb (pretty-print using your
own rules), noweb, Funnelweb, and nuweb. Literate Programming suits
the way I think when solving a problem. I tend to start programming a
narrative, telling the story of the solution. These days I use mainly
nuweb (small C program, very easy to customise to your own
preferences) and html.

LP is not for everyone. It is definitely not for someone used to work
in a modern IDE. And it takes a bit of courage and conviction, if your
working with other people.

I use it mostly for smallish programs; one or two code files, <5000
lines of code. For example, scripted business logic for the
integrtions I do at work. Larger stuff involving muliple modules
usually involves more people, so the lowest common denominator wins.

Nuweb should be easy to get running on Plan 9. Noweb is harder, since
it depens on a lot of Unix scripts.

Robby

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[Russ Cox]

Noweb has a nice simple interface (if literate programming
is what you want) and runs on Plan 9.  It's somewhere:
I'm sure if you dig around you can find it.  Maybe it's in
/n/sources/extra.  I used it quite a bit with latex.  I don't
remember whether I ever used it with troff.

Russ

Re: [9fans] noweb and literal programming

[Aharon Robbins]

I have used it also.  Circa 10.5 years ago there was a race condition in
the scripts that ran it with troff which I fixed and sent back in; I think
they got into the dist.

Literate programming is a lot of fun and works well if you have the mindset
for it.

Arnold

In article <dd6fe68a0904111628h20406a52xd702d276bf278be8@mail.gmail.com>,
Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
>Noweb has a nice simple interface (if literate programming
>is what you want) and runs on Plan 9.  It's somewhere:
>I'm sure if you dig around you can find it.  Maybe it's in
>/n/sources/extra.  I used it quite a bit with latex.  I don't
>remember whether I ever used it with troff.
>
>Russ
>


--
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