From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2011-11-17T00:15:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Literate programming and Ruby

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Michael Sokol <mikaa123@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've recently digged into Donald Knuth's literate programming paradigm. I
> find it really interesting on an academic standpoint, and I from the papers
> I've read, the benefits are real (less bugs, easier maintenance, proper
> documentation, etc...)

I am skeptical: if the benefits would be so great I would expect it to
be used much more.  Instead, we have Javadoc and doxygen and manage
source code in separate files.  The latter is definitively easier to
track in RC systems so my assumption is that the community has somehow
decided that it's usually better off without literate programming.

> However, most of the articles I've read on that matter are from the 90's.
> It seems like there was a lost of momentum in that area.

When I was introduced to it in the 90's it somehow felt old already. :-)

> Is anyone using literate programming tools like Noweb with real life ruby
> projects? I'm curious to know what's the state of literate programming in
> the ruby community. I'm aware of Rocco which does a wonderful job at
> "weaving" source files into literate-programing-style outputs.

I think RSpec also does a good job at making code readable - while
Ruby code in general is very readable (compared to the $${big
contender};;; in the scripting arena anyway).

Kind regards

robert

-- 
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