Someone must ultimately have written those higher-level abstractions (such as tr, sort, uniq, sed, etc.) in a lower-level language. In a literate form? (Unlikel

Someone must ultimately have written those higher-level abstractions (such as tr, sort, uniq, sed, etc.) in a lower-level language. In a literate form? (Unlikely!) Of course it's generally easier to document and understand software built using (appropriate) higher-level abstractions. Just like most of us find it easier to write and maintain {C++,Java,Python,JS,Lisp,...} software than to do everything in machine code. But whatever level we're programming at, there is arguably a place for a literate programming approach to improve exposition. Indeed, I've seen *nix shell scripts that are large and complex enough that a literate programming style would be a huge benefit in attempting to understand them.