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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 f

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

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