[acqq]

> The shell pipeline runs on a machine that can be found in a retail store today, rather than requiring an elaborate download/build process.

That argument points to the fact that your “view” of the whole topic changes the assumed definition of the problem that was given to Knuth to solve. Read once again the original text: he was supposed to illustrate how the “Literate programming” could be ised while writing a program which solves a given program. It was definitely not “write an example of calling the existing pre-written programs”.

And, of course, it was all in 1986, definitely not “to target the machine which can be found in the retail store in 2018.”

McIlroy already behaved as the goal had been different than it was.

[mschaef]

> McIlroy already behaved as the goal had been different than it was.

How would you feel about McIlroy's solution if it was semantically exactly the same, but written in a literate approach? (Essentially a version of 'weave/tangle', but for shell scripts.)

[acqq]

How would you feel if somebody would present the “six steps clicks in Excel and SQL Server” that eventually produce the same result? The starting goal was simply not “show how to use and combine external programs.” Even if you need some kind of skill to combine them. It’s exactly the same kind of missed fullfilment of the given starting task.

[mschaef]

The reason I asked about a literate programming version of the shell script is that it speaks directly to Knuth's original stated goal: "I’ll try to prove the merits of literate programming by finding the best possible solution to whatever problem you pose"

In the context of that requirement, the it's the use of literate programming that's more of a concern than the specific implementation. (Which is why I asked about a literate version of the shell pipeline.)

Earlier in the thread, you also mention this concern around data volumes:

> If you have hundreds of gigabytes of input, you'd have to have at least that much more just to sort it. McIlroy's approach is a good one for one-off program or not too big input processing,

There, your concern is not justified by the stated requirements of the problem: "I did impose an efficiency constraint: a user should be able to find the 100 most frequent words in a twenty-page technical paper"

I do think McIlroy failed to solve the problem of demonstrating the value of literate programming, but I'm not sympathetic to arguments that he should've used more complex algorithms or relied on less library code. This is particularly the case when the additional complexity is only relevant in cases that don't fall into the given requirements.

(A literate program that uses SQL server or Excel might be an interesting read....)

[acqq]

> The reason I asked about a literate programming version of the shell script is that it speaks directly to Knuth's original stated goal: "I’ll try to prove the merits of literate programming by finding the best possible solution to whatever problem you pose" In the context of that requirement, the it's the use of literate programming that's more of a concern than the specific implementation.

And McIlroy's "solution" is provably not the "best possible solution" if you are interested in the algorithms, algorithmic complexity, the resources used, you know, all the topics studied by people doing computer science. All these topics are still relevant today.

That is the domain that was of interest to both Bentley and Knuth, and McIlroy "sabotaged" the whole by presenting effectively only a list of calls to the stand-alone programs which he hasn't developed himself, which he avoided to present, and even without looking at them, just by analyzing what are the best possible implementations of these, every student of computer science can prove that McIlroy's solution is worse.

If you carefully read the original text (and if you understand the topics of computer science), you can recognize that McIlroy was aware of the algorithmic superiority of Knuth's solution.

Knuth definitely and provably won.

[svat]

While I have been watching this subthread with increasing dread, I feel I should point out it was not a competition or contest to be "won" -- Knuth wrote an interesting program, and McIlroy wrote an interesting review of it.

[acqq]

> it was not a competition or contest to be "won"

Sure, it wasn't a competition. The fact remains: McIlroy criticized Knuth's presentation of complete algorithms which effectively solved specified problem, by presenting just a sequence of calls which provably have to call the implementations that must implement provably worse algorithms. In the column in ACM whose topic were... algorithms, edited by Jon Bentley.

So if you consider that two sides presented their arguments regarding the algorithms related to the specific problem, we can still say that Knuth "won" that "dispute."

[mschaef]

Well put.

I think it's possible and desirable to simultaneously respect both approaches for their respective merits. Maybe ironically for this profession, the choice isn't either/or.