[TUHS] Literate Programming (was Comments in early Unix systems)

[toby@telegraphics.com.au (Toby Thain)]

On 2018-03-22 12:30 PM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Knuth offered the remedy of "literate programming", which
>> might help in academic circles. In business, probably not.
> 
> IMHO this is too bad. Code I've written using LP is generally 
> more correct earlier on than otherwise. And it's very enjoyable
> to write code and explanation at the same time; I feel like I'm
> talking out loud directly to my reader, a person, and not just
> coding for myself or the compiler.
> 
> Significant proofs by example are Knuth's TeX and MetaFont,
> and the lcc compiler by Dave Hanson and <I forgot>.

Chris Fraser (AT&T Bell Labs at the time).

As you say, the whole book is a literate program:
https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Hanson-Retargetable-C-Compiler-A-Design-and-Implementation/PGM166351.html


> 
> Shameless plug: I have written a small LP system in gawk designed
> for use with the Texinfo markup language. ...
> Thanks,
> 
> Arnold
>