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Re: "hello, world" Literate Programming example in Noweb

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On 2024-11-01, Wolfgang Agnes <wagnes@jemoni.to> wrote:
> Welcome to the literate programming world.

Thank you, especially for the really thoughtful response. This kind of
constructive reply is exactly what I wanted.

> perhaps the first chunk should be /hello main body/ because that is precisely
> what we expect from a hello-world.

I agree. Part of what's fun about this design process is, instead of starting
literally at the top and sectioning down, or at the bottom and chunking up, you
can start at the middle, then both section down and chunk up. Knuth discovered
this was true for him also, and mentions it in the "Literate Programming" paper.
The tutorial should be reordered to demonstrate that.

> by calling your chunks as holons, you're eclipsing the name ``chunk'' which
> seems to be the understand one.  Something to think about.
> [...]
> I see you explain the NOWEB terminology.  I wonder if Knuth was the one
> who started with the term /chunk/ as well.  If so, then I'd advise
> against /holon/.

My choice of _holon_ reflects my intention that the tutorial be, or become, less
about a particular tool, and more about what literate programming _is_, while
still showing a working example.

Knuth uses neither _chunk_ nor _holon_. In the "Literate Programming" paper, he
acknowledges de Marneffe's Holon Programming Language as the primary influence
on the design of WEB, but does not follow de Marneffe's terminology. In the WEB
manual he uses _module_, and in CWEB he uses _section_. Ramsey (noweb) uses
_chunk_. Briggs (nuweb) uses _scrap_ and _macro_. In short, there is no
agreed-on term.

The term _holon_ captures good design better than the others. It describes a
relatively independent "organic" or "granular" unit of code, whose form and
purpose is easily graspable by the reader, and whose boundaries easily allow for
sectioning down and chunking up, validation, testing, refactoring, etc. And
that's what a good literate programmer aims for.

> (*) Cosmetics

Again thank you.

> More often than not, users don't have NOWEB installed, so they wouldn't
> be able to do anything with your program but read it.

I need to add an appendix, that shows how a person could easily get Noweb
running and actually execute the tutorial code.

Cheers!
Edward

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"hello, world" Literate Programming example in Noweb Edward McGuire <metaed@metaed.com> - 2024-10-31 16:17 -0600
  Re: "hello, world" Literate Programming example in Noweb Wolfgang Agnes <wagnes@jemoni.to> - 2024-11-01 17:28 -0600
    Re: "hello, world" Literate Programming example in Noweb Edward McGuire <metaed@metaed.com> - 2024-11-01 21:23 -0600
      Re: "hello, world" Literate Programming example in Noweb Wolfgang Agnes <wagnes@jemoni.to> - 2024-11-01 23:11 -0600

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