5 ms·

It's wild to me that we're still using a program written in a custom programming language that is in turn implemented in Pascal. It does speak to Knuth's progra

It's wild to me that we're still using a program written in a custom programming language that is in turn implemented in Pascal. It does speak to Knuth's programming ability that tex has lasted so long with so few bugs. That said, I would love to have a successor at some point with a little more usability and a little better interoperability.

smitty1e 5y ago
TeX is like the Latin language. Its esoteric nature keeps out the riff-raff.
plafl 5y ago
It requires a lot of skill to write TeX, but the key is declaring it feature frozen for almost 40 years. I like Knuth's approach to open source: "Here is the code, I wrote it because I needed it, I hope you find it useful. Now, if you don't mind I have things to do. I no longer use email but I read snail mail every six months"
jhoechtl 5y ago
The successor is there: Sile https://sile-typesetter.org https://sile-typesetter.org
- jfk13 5y ago
  While SILE is an interesting project, it's some way from being ready to be "the successor to TeX".
NelsonMinar 5y ago
The responses here think you are talking about the TeX programming language. But you're talking about Web, which dating to 1987 long predates the WWW. The key feature of it is "literate programming", the idea that you'd write an essay interspersed with the working code. It's not an idea that caught on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(programming_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(programming_system)
- todd8 5y ago
  In the 80's I was intrigued by literate programming. I studied Knuth's literate source code for TeX carefully. You're right, it never caught on, but a few years ago I read a statement by Knuth that said he still writes code that way. Today, about half of the time my Emacs configuration is written in org-mode babel[1] which supports literate programming. In fact, this a common example of literate programming that I see on the internet along with Jupyter Python[2] notebooks widely used by scientists. Although literate programming seems to work okay for Emacs configurations (often reaching over a thousand lines of code), I've never felt like the approach helped me enough to employ in other programs. [1] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html [2] https://jupyter.org https://jupyter.org
  - NelsonMinar 5y ago
    That's an interesting connection between Jupyter and Literate Programming. The difference being Jupyter-style notebooks also have the output of the code; in fact the source is often hidding. Jupyter was inspired by Wolfram Notebooks, which uses "literate programming" as a term directly in their marketing materials. https://www.wolfram.com/notebooks/ https://www.wolfram.com/notebooks/
- LNSY 5y ago
  I know a lot of data scientists for the City of LA are using literate programming, and I'm bumping into younger programmers who are really into it. I think its swell and very useful.
- sharikous 5y ago
  I guess Jupyter/Pluto.jl/Observable/Mathematica/Matlab/.... notebooks are literate programming, in a way

smitty1e 5y ago

TeX is like the Latin language. Its esoteric nature keeps out the riff-raff.

plafl 5y ago

It requires a lot of skill to write TeX, but the key is declaring it feature frozen for almost 40 years. I like Knuth's approach to open source: "Here is the code, I wrote it because I needed it, I hope you find it useful. Now, if you don't mind I have things to do. I no longer use email but I read snail mail every six months"

jhoechtl 5y ago

The successor is there: Sile https://sile-typesetter.org https://sile-typesetter.org

jfk13 5y ago
While SILE is an interesting project, it's some way from being ready to be "the successor to TeX".

NelsonMinar 5y ago

The responses here think you are talking about the TeX programming language. But you're talking about Web, which dating to 1987 long predates the WWW. The key feature of it is "literate programming", the idea that you'd write an essay interspersed with the working code. It's not an idea that caught on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(programming_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(programming_system)

todd8 5y ago
In the 80's I was intrigued by literate programming. I studied Knuth's literate source code for TeX carefully. You're right, it never caught on, but a few years ago I read a statement by Knuth that said he still writes code that way. Today, about half of the time my Emacs configuration is written in org-mode babel[1] which supports literate programming. In fact, this a common example of literate programming that I see on the internet along with Jupyter Python[2] notebooks widely used by scientists. Although literate programming seems to work okay for Emacs configurations (often reaching over a thousand lines of code), I've never felt like the approach helped me enough to employ in other programs. [1] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html [2] https://jupyter.org https://jupyter.org
- NelsonMinar 5y ago
  That's an interesting connection between Jupyter and Literate Programming. The difference being Jupyter-style notebooks also have the output of the code; in fact the source is often hidding. Jupyter was inspired by Wolfram Notebooks, which uses "literate programming" as a term directly in their marketing materials. https://www.wolfram.com/notebooks/ https://www.wolfram.com/notebooks/
LNSY 5y ago
I know a lot of data scientists for the City of LA are using literate programming, and I'm bumping into younger programmers who are really into it. I think its swell and very useful.
sharikous 5y ago
I guess Jupyter/Pluto.jl/Observable/Mathematica/Matlab/.... notebooks are literate programming, in a way