Examples of lightweight literate programming

Here I am accumulating a small collection of examples of lightweight literate programming in my style. I expect to add to this collection occasionally.

Here is a brief example in which the "programming language" is XSLT, a notation for defining transformations on XML data. Specifically, this small "program" performs one of the basic literate programming transformations: extracting the code sections. In this case, the input is a lightweight-literate-programming document written in the XML form of DocBook. Standard DocBook tools can be used to render the document on paper, as web pages, and in other forms. The example also shows how my colleagues and I use DocBook for lightweight literate programming by using the DocBook <programlisting> construct.

Here are some examples of Python library classes and routines that I have used in applications I have written. They illustrate particular programming techniques in the Python language, and so they contain much more explanatory text than code.

• Named objects with name spaces
• Populating class instances with data from flat files

Next are somewhat longer examples. These are complete but rather small applications, really done just as programming exercises rather than to meet any real-world demand.

• A variable-speed digital clock. The code is in the Java language.
• Generating playing cards for homemade games. The code is in the Python language, and the output is PostScript.

The final examples are real applications created for real clients.

• A program to administer an exam interactively and record the subject's answers and reaction times. The code is in Python. This application is rather small, with a very simple and minimal GUI, but it met a real need.
• A more extensive example (available only in Postscript -- sorry): a "rehearsal scheduler's assistant", intended to help with the scheduling of the rehearsals and other preparation activities for a theatrical production. Again, the programming language is Python. The document is 118 printed pages long; the program, when extracted, is 1551 lines long, counting only the non-blank, non-comment lines.

My colleague John Shipman has a larger collection of examples.

Last modified: April 6, 2007 by Allan Stavely (email astavely@acm.org). This web page is a work in progress.