Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It took 30 years, but literate programming paradigm is now very commonly referenced when working with notebooks, even though it's not what Knuth was going for in the first place and the original intent was different.

Notebooks are a direct evolution of REPLs and at the time of writing (Knuth published his paper on literate programming in 1984), REPLs have been well known (they had been around since 1970s). Yet there is not a single mention of them in the original paper, nor any prediction how literate-programming-capable notebooks could look like. At the time, these were two different concepts each serving its own need (documentation vs exploratory programming).



Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: