Lecture overview
Keyboard shortcut: 'u'  Previous page
Keyboard shortcut: 'p'  Next page
Keyboard shortcut: 'n'  Lecture notes - all slides and notes together  slide
Keyboard shortcut: 't'  Help page about these notes  Alphabetic index  Course home  Slide 4 : 21
Literate Programming and the WEB System

Here we will briefly describe an important background and inspiration, namely Knuth's ideas of literate programming.

Knuth invented literate programming in order to explain and publish his programs in articles and books

  • Characteristics of literate programming:

    • A program is structured according to its explanation

    • The distance between the documentation and the program is small

      • Physical proximity

      • The pieces of program 'live in' the documentation

      • The opposite approach of conventional program commenting

Literate programming is typically supported by tools in the WEB-family