Instant Literate Programming

Know your Program

"Programming is best regarded as the process of creating works of literature, which are meant to be read. -- Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do." Donald Knuth

Make it Readable

Holonforth uses Knuth's concept of literate programming in a different way. There is no WEB, WEAVE and TANGLE.

Instead I take Knuth's advice at face value: Write programs as works of literature. Technical literature of course. But still, write a program like a book. Make and keep it readable. Like a good story. A good story "works".

Holonforth is instant because you change text and code interactively in real time. Text and code are immediately viable. You can work on a living target, like an artist, say composer, painter or sculpturer.

Click in the text and edit. Click on a name to see its definition. Browse the structure. Lookup visited pages and currently revised elements. You know where you are.

Source is Text

Write source text, not code. With the Forth concept the source can be readable without comments. The source documents itself.

Concatenative Programming Language

Forth program elements are words. Definitions are a concatenation of words, like a natural language. Without artificial formal delimiters.