[FRIAM] coding versus music

[Stephen Guerin]

Archive pointer to 2013 FRIAM thread on literate programming:
  http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/Literate-CoffeeScript-td7581862.html

Owen gave a nice WedTech talk sometime around then, too.

-Stephen

On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 8:24 PM Russell Standish <lists at hpcoders.com.au>
wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 11:45:46AM -0700, Prof David West wrote:
> >
> > But — a program has two audiences: the machine (no communication here)
> and
> > other programmers (tons of miscommunication here). This is what the
> reference
> > from Eric Smith talks about. There is an entire, usually ignored,
> paradigm in
> > computer science called "literate programming"  — the most prominent
> advocate,
> > Donald Knuth.
> >
> > If one were skilled at literate programming, one would be communicating
> to
> > another programmer (or herself at a later point in time) all the
> knowledge and
> > meaning necessary for the latter to understand, modify, enhance, or
> correct the
> > program as needs be. If possible this would be a communication skill
> worth
> > developing — might lead to more precise and accurate communication
> outside the
> > world of the computer.
>
> Literate programming is alive and well in modern software engineering
> - it just isn't called that. Knuth's tools which involved a special
> input language, a tool for converting that to compileable Pascal and
> Latex for producing humane readable printouts of the code were
> fantastic for the 1980s, but are rather dated for current software
> development requirements.
>
> In C++, one uses a tool called Doxygen, which parses standard C++
> code, and produces HTML, Latex and other possibilities. The "dot"
> network graphics tool is used to produce interactive UML diagrams of
> the class structures, and source code is annotate with hyperlinks
> allowing you to click on (say) a variable name, to find out what type
> it is, where it is defined and so on. Plus, there is a huge amount of
> doxygen markup features available, allowing things like embedded LaTeX
> equations, or adding in crafted HTML links and so on. In short it does
> everything Knuth's web tool did, and more, without the need to write
> in an idiosyncratic source language.
>
> When I come across a piece of unfamiliar code, the _first_ thing I do
> is run doxygen on it, and then start reading the code using a web
> browser. People are sometimes amazed at how quickly I find my way
> around a new code base - when that happens, I let them in on my
> superpower, ie doxygen.
>
> Doxygen handles a number of programming environments, Java, C#,
> Fortran even, though not Python nor Javascript alas. Other
> environments have similar tools, of greater or lesser power: eg Java
> has Javadoc (which is broadly compatible with Doxygen, in fact).
>
> Knuth should be commended for being 30 years ahead of his time with
> literate programming, and should be glad the industry does finally
> "get it", even if his contribution is largely forgotten, and not
> acknowledged by the hordes of software engineers currently practising.
>
>
> --
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders     hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
>                       http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>
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>
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