Requirements for an elucidative programming environment

Abstract

Motivates a variation of literate programming which I call "elucidative programming". Elucidative programming is oriented towards program explanation, with the purpose of throwing light on important and complex program relationships. Since it was proposed by D.E. Knuth (1984), literate programming has been one of the most viable approaches to radically improving internal program documentation. Unfortunately, most programmers find the ideas of literate programming, as supported by Web-like tools, far too impractical, academic and far-fetched in relation to current programming practices. With elucidative programming, I focus on the best ideas of literate programming. I disregard the program-publishing aspects as technical literature, and I provide mechanisms with which documentation can be added to a program without affecting or disturbing the source program. My ideas about elucidative programming are presented as a number of requirements, and in a discussion of programming environment issues in relation to these new ideas.