What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to explore Donald Knuth's concept of literate programming and its implications for contemporary software development practices.

August 13, 20260 citationsOpen Access

Literate Programming: Donald Knuth, WEB, and Contemporary Workflows

View Full Paper

SSSam Starling ODOksana Dubinetska

Key Points

The aim is to explore Donald Knuth's concept of literate programming and its implications for contemporary software development practices.
Reviewed Knuth's original arguments in his 1984 article on literate programming.
Analyzed the connections between literate programming and modern tools like WEB and LLMs.
Examined the impact of literate programming on source generation and reproducible environments.
Identified how WEB facilitates the creation of executable documents.
Showed the relevance of literate programming in enhancing code readability and maintainability.
Discussed the role of LLMs in supporting literate programming workflows.

Abstract

Donald Knuth’s 1984 article Literate Programming proposed writing programs primarily for human readers and only secondarily for machine execution. This review reconstructs that argument through WEB and traces its relevance to source generation, executable documents, reproducible environments, and LLM-assisted development. Companion repository: https://github.com/Zhovten-Games/literate-programming

Ask AI

Helpful

Bookmark

View Full Paper

Ask AI

Helpful

Bookmark

View Full Paper

Literate Programming: Donald Knuth, WEB, and Contemporary Workflows

Key Points

Abstract

Cite This Study

Also Consider

Also Consider