Rethinking Literate Programming: Is Knuth's Approach Obsolete?

This article offers a critical examination of Donald Knuth's literate programming approach. The author argues that Knuth's method overemphasizes typesetting while neglecting the crucial aspect of code organization, resulting in static, less interactive documentation. The author advocates for a literate programming style that prioritizes code organization and interactive feedback, illustrating its advantages with a simple interpreter he created. The key takeaway is that effective literate programming should allow developers to modify and run code directly within their programming environment, not just passively read a static document.