LiteratePrograms wiki

Hi everybody. This is a short post, but I just wanted to tell you all about a new wiki I created called LiteratePrograms, based on an extension of the same MediaWiki software used by Wikipedia.

Some of you read my earlier post about literate programming and some of the advantages it has for easy-to-read exhibition of code. On LiteratePrograms, every article is a literate program: it is simultaneously a document and a piece of code which can be downloaded, compiled, and run. The "download code" tab at the top of every article runs the noweb literate programming tool which extracts code segments from the discussion, puts them back in a form that can be compiled, and zips them up in a package for download. Additionally, the wiki markup, editable by anyone, allows rich documentation including mathematical formulas and diagrams. Finally, all content is released under the liberal MIT/X11 non-copyleft license, so anybody can use it, even for commercial purposes. You can see a sample of LP in action at Insertion sort (C, simple).

Recently featured at Lambda the Ultimate (thanks Allan!), LP has attracted a lot of attention and has a couple dozen articles and users now. The users have some pretty diverse interests in languages and subject areas that I would never have anticipated (see Pi with Machin's formula (Python), Hello World (occam)).

I invite your suggestions for and participation in and the site - in particular, we're really lacking in Windows and .NET programs and programmers at the moment, and I know you guys can help. See How to write an article and take a look at the existing articles to learn about the markup syntax. Please ask me any questions you have. Thanks everyone.