Literate Programming

February 11, 2021 Jeremiah Hendren

Literate Programming

Knuth, Donald E.
The Computer Journal 27, no. 2 (1984): 97-111
https://doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/27.2.97

The past ten years have witnessed substantial improvements in programming methodology. This advance, carried out under the banner of “structured programming,” has led to programs that are more reliable and easier to comprehend; yet the results are not entirely satisfactory. My purpose in the present paper is to propose another motto that may be appropriate for the next decade, as we attempt to make further progress in the state of the art. I believe that the time is ripe for significantly better documentation of programs, and that we can best achieve this by considering programs to be works of literature. Hence, my title: “Literate Programming.” Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

Donald Knuth

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