Literate programming and APL

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Literate programming and APL

Postby alexeyv on Wed Mar 30, 2016 4:58 pm

Every time I'm trying to write even a simple function, I catch myself on what I'm writing much more comments than actual code. This lead me to thinking what literate programming and APL could be a good match. Googling for this lead me to the following article: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=173834.173841&CFID=596068809&CFTOKEN=99575293. However I can't find this APLWEB anywhere :(
What is your as users of Dyalog APL opinion on this approach?
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Re: Literate programming and APL

Postby MBaas on Thu Mar 31, 2016 4:40 am

I've used APLWEB 22yrs ago! Even met its author :-) Also gave a talk about it at an APL Germany meeting.

I've used it for one project and found it really useful there - it's much more than "only" doco, since it also has an ability to create "macros" etc., so you actually write your code in a different way... And as the doc goes through TeX, it is at least typografically perfect!

But these were different times: I used STSC at the time, source-code editing was a different story (no Unicode, of course!) etc., so it also was a slightly painful experience. Also I moved away from TeX. And CvB (the author) also moved on, seems he works with SAP now (*sigh*).

To use it in todays world, one would have to re-implement the thing!
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