In the first article of this series, we reviewed the history of literate programming. In the second article, we mused about how and why literate programming never realized its immense promise. In that article, I boldly promised a third article in the series which would
…propose a new generation of literate programming concepts and tools — and a new series of use cases — which will finally allow us to realize the potential of Knuth’s conceptual breakthrough.
However, I now see clearly that this ambitious enterprise cannot possibly be realized in one additional article. A full rethinking of literate programming might take a year, or a decade. It will require an immense amount of conceptualization, invention, experimentation, and development. So in this, the third article in the series, I will limit myself to framing the problem, presenting the desiderata — the requirements — for a new model and a new era of literate programming, and provide the briefest of sketches of how we could move toward satisfying them, in the form of a new medium I call a “litbook”, a vastly enhanced type of ebook which is real-time, instrumented, hyperconnected, and learning-equipped.
