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Programs to Read

wiki.c2.com

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Re: Programs to Read

#41

Post by mkl »

becca_smth81 wrote: post #16
fao_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, for some reason you're shadowbanned? As a new account I find this really unusual. It's likely you might need to verify your email or something. I've vouched for this comment, which is why it appears. On Topic: there was a discussion a year ago about what the progress block is: https://github.com/WardCunningham/remodeling/issues/24 It seems that he's stuck with some files that are mixed-encoding and can't repair t…

Thank you very much. This is a new account, but I don't know why I'd be banned :/ And why would you be able to see it and not me? :( On Topic again: c2.com is great, I'd love if someone would take ownership and keep maintaining it.

It's probably because your first comment contains a link, and automated account creation for spamming purposes is unfortunately a thing. The site relies on users with high enough karma clicking a button to vouch for legitimate users to unban accounts (or draw the mods' attention), like what happened to you here.

Hacker News uses shadow-banning, so the person banned for problematic behaviour can't tell and doesn't just switch to a new account.

Re: Programs to Read

#42

Post by deathanatos »

akkartik wrote: post #34

One claim that caught my eye: Tex being unbuggy because it's written in the Literate Programming style. I like LP but that's a big claim. Occam's razor suggests a more likely answer: it was written by Knuth! A great programmer, and also one who grew up programming non-interactively: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7

On the one hand, I see your point. But on the other hand, if a master of some skill says "This is how I achieve the results I achieve." — perhaps imitating that might just be valuable. Does a dancer not get better by learning to imitate (at least at first) a master? (Though perhaps eventually, a deeper understanding of the artform might take hold, at which point experimentation and improvisation allow the dancer to explore undiscovered variations of the artform.)

And I don't think it is just that Knuth does it that catches my attention either. Ideally, I think (if I understand the premise of literate programming), literate programming would force the programmer to take the time to explain the code being written, and ideally, the rationale behind why that code solves the problem at hand. And to do that, the programmer must first understand the code being written, and I think upon attempting to do that, they'll find they have not sufficiently thought the problem through.

I fear too many of the coders I know would not honestly attempt it; they are in too much of a hurry to get the code written.

Now, I don't think literate programming is the only way to accomplish that; simply writing good docstrings and comments might suffice to a good degree (and good ones: I too often review code where the docstring is a basic repetition of the function name and arguments, or where the comments explain what is being done, but not why). But far too often I see no comments, no docstrings, no tests, just miles and miles of code, and so it is no wonder that Knuth is what he is.

Re: Programs to Read

#43

Post by akkartik »

deathanatos wrote: post #42
akkartik wrote: post #34

One claim that caught my eye: Tex being unbuggy because it's written in the Literate Programming style. I like LP but that's a big claim. Occam's razor suggests a more likely answer: it was written by Knuth! A great programmer, and also one who grew up programming non-interactively: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7

On the one hand, I see your point. But on the other hand, if a master of some skill says "This is how I achieve the results I achieve." — perhaps imitating that might just be valuable. Does a dancer not get better by learning to imitate (at least at first) a master? (Though perhaps eventually, a deeper understanding of the artform might take hold, at which point experimentation and improvisation allow the dancer to e…

No disagreement there! Though you may violently agree or disagree with this thing I wrote a couple of years ago: http://akkartik.name/post/literate-programming

I also just looked at your profile, and it resonates a lot. Tell me what you think of mine: http://akkartik.name/post/about

Re: Programs to Read

#44

Post by YZF »

wwweston wrote: post #28

Knuth vs McIlroy's solutions for a Word Frequency programming challenge: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg... Knuth's solution has its own elegance and interest including various efficiencies and from-scratch facilities. McIlroy's will make you wonder how much you're wasting in time and complexity.

Anywhere I can see Knuth's solution online? Can't seem to find the link in there.

Re: Programs to Read

#47

Post by lozenge »

amyjess wrote: post #8
tabtab wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ward Cunningham decided to close c2 to new material in part because he got tired of battling a determined vandal who was all bent out of shape over grammer and spailing, and second to try out his new "Federated Wiki" concept. So far, Federated Wiki is a flop in my opinion. C2 was interesting in that software developers and IT professionals tried to categorize debates and disagreements over software engineering issues…

> Ward Cunningham decided to close c2 to new material in part because he got tired of battling a determined vandal who was all bent out of shape over grammer and spailing It's honestly pretty upsetting that one vandal is enough to ruin one of the oldest and most significant institutions on the web for everybody.

I think it has value as a snapshot archive as well. The article on extreme programming would look quite different today.

Re: Programs to Read

#49

Post by emmanueloga_ »

akkartik wrote: post #34

One claim that caught my eye: Tex being unbuggy because it's written in the Literate Programming style. I like LP but that's a big claim. Occam's razor suggests a more likely answer: it was written by Knuth! A great programmer, and also one who grew up programming non-interactively: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7

Reading TeX original source is easier said than done... I think I managed to get PDF some time ago but took me like 30 minutes of browsing. Not talk about running it...

Re: Programs to Read

#50

Post by svat »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #49
akkartik wrote: post #34

One claim that caught my eye: Tex being unbuggy because it's written in the Literate Programming style. I like LP but that's a big claim. Occam's razor suggests a more likely answer: it was written by Knuth! A great programmer, and also one who grew up programming non-interactively: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html#7

Reading TeX original source is easier said than done... I think I managed to get PDF some time ago but took me like 30 minutes of browsing. Not talk about running it...

It's available as a book (TeX: The Program, volume B of Computers and Typesetting), and Knuth considers the book as the canonical thing to read. You almost surely don't have a PDF of the entire book, but it's easily available in good libraries: http://www.worldcat.org/title/tex-the-program/oclc/826569131 (or you can buy it: as I was typing this comment I just finally bought a used copy from Amazon for $9 which is pretty good for a hardcover book).

If you have a typical TeX distribution installed, you can see an approximation by running `texdoc tex`, which brings up the PDF that is also available online e.g. here: http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/tex/tex.pdf -- but it is a bit hard to make sense of if you're not familiar with the conventions of WEB (the book starts with a "How to read a WEB") -- as a workaround maybe you can read webman (http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/web/webman.pd...) though that's meant for the programmer (working with the raw .web files) rather than the reader (working with the typeset output).

And it helps to be familiar with Pascal, and the typical conventions of programming style in the 1970s (e.g. that of the P4 (Pascal) Compiler and Interpreter, also published as a book and also available online: https://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/pascal/ )

I've been reading the TeX program in bits and pieces for over a year now, and only now do I have a rough sense of it all :-)

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