23 Nov
2011
23 Nov
'11
4:40 p.m.
> Maybe what software development really needs is a
language where the
> comments *are* the code?
...and we come full circle.
*That* was Knuth's point in creating Literate
Programming.
I find that doubtful; if so, he botched it far worse than I would have
thought anyone of his skill and knowledge could. Web code - or, at
least, what web code I've seen - is definitely divided into `code' and
`comments'. (Web does a better job encouraging the programmer to keep
the comments next to the code than many languages, but it's a long way
from not having any distinction between the two.)
I thought "the code _is_ the comment" was (much of) the point of COBOL,
actually. It came closer than anything else I've seen, at any rate.
It failed badly, not at "the code is the comment" per se but at the
implied "the code doesn't need any additional comments", largely
because to the extent that the code is the comment, the comment just
echos the code. At the very best, that documents what and how; it
cannot say why, and it cannot say what or how at any level other than
the detailed one the code is written at.
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