On Fri, 2011-11-18 at 07:07 -0800, bernardH wrote: > > On Nov 18, 1:17 pm, daly <d...@axiom-developer.org> wrote: > > Many of you asked me to show an example of a literate > > program and demonstrate the use of the tangle function. > > Thanks to your perseverance, I am looking into practicing literate > programming. > > However, I decided to settle for emacs org-mode environment with the > literate elisp for the relevant code (abel'part of org-mode) > being here : http://eschulte.github.com/org-babel/org-babel.org.html > I found an example of clojure project (research on genetic > programming) written in literate programming using babel org-mode for > emacs > is hosted here : > http://gitweb.adaptive.cs.unm.edu/asm.git/tree > > I do hope that others find those resources as useful as I found them.
I have nothing against org-mode. Indeed, I've been an emacs user since I could spell it. I believe the above examples are not literate programmings. They miss the point completely. They are using emacs org-mode for DOCUMENTATION. Literate programming is NOT documentation. It is a way to communicate from one person to another by starting from ideas and reducing them to practice. I may have missed the point but the above programs are just fancier ways of 1970 style coding using a new format tool. Compare the example I gave at http://axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/litprog.html with the above programs. See if you can spot a qualitative difference. My literate program tries to motivate the need for tangle, to explain why it works in a development context, and then gets down to details of implementation. It is a story. Where does this happen in the org-mode example? Perhaps I missed something but the author does not seem to be concentrating on communicating their ideas to me. Where did I go wrong? What emacs keystrokes get me a copy of the full document to read? Literate programming is about communication, not documentation. The org-mode tool is perfectly fine but be very, very careful not to miss this fundamental point. People should be able to just pick up clojure-core and read it like a novel, from ideas to implementation, and be able to understand it enough to change it. If your code can pass this "independence test" then your code is literate. Tim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
