3 ms·

Yeah I agree. What I would imagine a tool like this would do is help to find and navigate the pretty good order(s) whether they have been hand crafted at first

Yeah I agree. What I would imagine a tool like this would do is help to find and navigate the pretty good order(s) whether they have been hand crafted at first by the author or not. A comparison would be how desire paths form and are often turned into real paths. I like your parenthetical observation too!

EdwardCoffin 10y ago
There was an interview with Guy Steele in the book Coders at Work, and in one bit he had something to say about actually referring to the (literate) source code for TeX [1]: Sometimes I've got a specific goal because I'm trying to solve a problem. There have been exactly two times, I think, that I was not able to fix a bug in my TeX macros by reading The TeXbook and it was necessary to go ahead and read TeX: The Program to find out exactly how a feature worked. In each case I was able to find my answer in 15 minutes because TeX: The Program is so well documented and cross-referenced. That, in itself, is an eye-opener--the fact that a program can be so organized and so documented, so indexed, that you can find something quickly. The other thing I learned from it is how a master programmer organizes data structures, how he organizes the code so as to make it easier to read. Knuth carefully laid out TeX: The Program so you could almost read it as a novel or something. You could read it in a linear pass. You'd probably want to do some jumping back and forth as you encountered various things. Of course, it was an enormous amount of work on his part, which is why very few programs have been done that way. [1] link to the page (337) in Google Books https://books.google.ca/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA337 https://books.google.ca/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA337
- jarmitage 10y ago
  That's a great anecdote and makes we want to read TeX: The Program. I really think there's something in the 'jumping back and forth' of the reader that could be leveraged, like if there was a way of recording, distributing, aggregating, analysing it etc.
  - EdwardCoffin 10y ago
    It doesn't add that much to the above, but the now defunct Bookpool had a column where they asked various authors for lists of their favourite 10 computer books, and they asked Guy Steele [1]. His first entry was: Computers & Typesetting, Volumes A-E Boxed Set by Donald E. Knuth -- I'll read anything that Don Knuth writes, and he has written quite a bit, including Surreal Numbers and 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated as well as the famous Art of Computer Programming series. But this five-volume set is my favorite. The two volumes titled (and sold separately) as The TeXbook and The METAFONT book are well-known, but what I really recommend to you are TeX: The Program and METAFONT: The Program, because these are simply the best-written, best-documented, best-debugged programs of their size ever published. They reward careful study. I've tried to read the source for TeX: The Program (I actually have the boxed set he mentions), but was impeded by my lack of knowledge of TeX. I keep meaning to get back to it. [1] Guy's list in archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20080422183814/http://www.bookpool.com/ct/184 http://web.archive.org/web/20080422183814/http://www.bookpoo...

EdwardCoffin 10y ago

There was an interview with Guy Steele in the book Coders at Work, and in one bit he had something to say about actually referring to the (literate) source code for TeX [1]: Sometimes I've got a specific goal because I'm trying to solve a problem. There have been exactly two times, I think, that I was not able to fix a bug in my TeX macros by reading The TeXbook and it was necessary to go ahead and read TeX: The Program to find out exactly how a feature worked. In each case I was able to find my answer in 15 minutes because TeX: The Program is so well documented and cross-referenced. That, in itself, is an eye-opener--the fact that a program can be so organized and so documented, so indexed, that you can find something quickly. The other thing I learned from it is how a master programmer organizes data structures, how he organizes the code so as to make it easier to read. Knuth carefully laid out TeX: The Program so you could almost read it as a novel or something. You could read it in a linear pass. You'd probably want to do some jumping back and forth as you encountered various things. Of course, it was an enormous amount of work on his part, which is why very few programs have been done that way. [1] link to the page (337) in Google Books https://books.google.ca/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA337 https://books.google.ca/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA337

jarmitage 10y ago
That's a great anecdote and makes we want to read TeX: The Program. I really think there's something in the 'jumping back and forth' of the reader that could be leveraged, like if there was a way of recording, distributing, aggregating, analysing it etc.
- EdwardCoffin 10y ago
  It doesn't add that much to the above, but the now defunct Bookpool had a column where they asked various authors for lists of their favourite 10 computer books, and they asked Guy Steele [1]. His first entry was: Computers & Typesetting, Volumes A-E Boxed Set by Donald E. Knuth -- I'll read anything that Don Knuth writes, and he has written quite a bit, including Surreal Numbers and 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated as well as the famous Art of Computer Programming series. But this five-volume set is my favorite. The two volumes titled (and sold separately) as The TeXbook and The METAFONT book are well-known, but what I really recommend to you are TeX: The Program and METAFONT: The Program, because these are simply the best-written, best-documented, best-debugged programs of their size ever published. They reward careful study. I've tried to read the source for TeX: The Program (I actually have the boxed set he mentions), but was impeded by my lack of knowledge of TeX. I keep meaning to get back to it. [1] Guy's list in archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20080422183814/http://www.bookpool.com/ct/184 http://web.archive.org/web/20080422183814/http://www.bookpoo...