> I wonder what kind of an impact literate programming has on maintenance. Can't imagine rewriting 40 lines of commentary to suit a 2 line code change to be par

> I wonder what kind of an impact literate programming has on maintenance. Can't imagine rewriting 40 lines of commentary to suit a 2 line code change to be particularly enjoyable. Reflecting on and expressing the motivation of a task and providing the rational of how you accomplished it, the alternatives you considered, etc. will obviously bring a higher cognitive load along with it than just "winging it". My guess is that for non trivial systems the benefits generally outweigh the costs. In most environments you're likely to work in, the extra "upfront" effort is unlikely to get recognized, not by one's bosses, often not even by oneself. I put upfront in quotes because I believe you don't just profit in the long term, explicitly thinking about the task and discussing / documenting the thought process generally leads to considering the problem more closely. Having a well designed and documented system probably will also cut down on those "2 line bodge fixed" that are to cumbersome to document in the long run. That said, it obviously depends on context, trivial code, throwaway code, boilerplate code exists...