Literate Programming on a Team Project (Abstract)
We used literate programming on a team project to write a 33,000-line
program for the Synthesizer Generator. The program, Penelope, was
written using WEB, a tool designed for writing literate
programs. Unlike other WEB programs, many of which have been
written by WEB's developer or by individuals, Penelope was not
intended to be published. We used WEB in the hope that
both our team and its final product would benefit from the advantages
often attributed to literate programming. The
WEB source served as good internal documentation throughout
development and maintenance, and it continues to document Penelope's
design and implementation.
Our experience also uncovered a number of
problems with WEB.
A preliminary version of the full paper is available in
PostScript form,
or you can get the scanned DjVu form.