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This is a fun sort of project --- couldn't resist knocking out an implementation for OpenPythonSCAD:

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/tdmt.py

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/threeDmo...

(and yes, the full name (3-Dimension Model Turtle) does have the same number of syllables as a certain for letter franchise staring beings named for a certain quartet named after Italian Renaissance artists)


Rather miss the notepad-central-UI --- I'd take more notes on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ if it had a similar facility for writing and scheduling and so forth.

List of Literate Programs published as books:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams...

The main website for this of course lists some resources:

http://literateprogramming.com/

most notably:

http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf

(the source code of the venerable Colossal Cave Adventure re-worked as a Literate Program by Dr. Donald Knuth)


For a fictional look at this see:

https://marshallbrain.com/manna


I would turn this around --- it acknowledges the fact that if one needs to write a complex program, and to maintain it over the long term, one will need not just the raw code, but also documentation for how that code was written, and how changes to it should be approached.

As I noted elsethread, the big thing which Literate Programming has netted me is that it makes editing easier/manageable, even for long and complex projects spread across multiple files --- having the single point of control/interaction where I can:

- make the actual change to the code to implement a new feature

- change the optional library which exposes this project to a secondary language

- update the documentation to note the new interface

- update the sample template files (one for the main implementation, the other for the secondary) to reflect the new feature

- update an on-going notes.txt file where the need for the new feature was originally noted

is _huge_ and ensures that no file is missed in the update.


There are lot of texts which were left out of this post --- I've been trying to collect literate programs published as books here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/21394355-william-adams...

Not sure where the author got the contention that there are only a few tools for literate programming --- it's a straight-forward enough task that many programmers do this --- heck, even I managed to (w/ a bit of help on tex.stackexchange): https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/literati... --- if it were more complex, and wasn't so implementation-specific (filenames need to be specified in multiple places), I'd write it up as a Literate Program and put it up on CTAN as a package.

One classic bit of advice for writing is, ‘It is perfectly okay to write garbage as long as you edit brilliantly.’ --- the great thing about a Literate Program is that it makes the act of editing far simpler, which has made feasible every program I've ever written which got past the 1K lines mark --- including an AppleScript for InDesign which Olav Martin Kvern, then the "Scripting Evangelist" for Adobe Systems declared to be impossible (my boss had promised a system for creating a four-level deep index from XML embedded in the text of pages in an InDesign document, while OMK averred that it was impossible to create an index entry for more than the main level of the index --- one has to have code which tracks the existence of an entry at each level of the index and where it does not exist, starting at the top-level, insert it, then work down and add the sub-index-entry to the index-entry it is beneath).


Notably one of the first people who whipped out a credit card to buy the 3D CAD/modeling program Rhinoceros 3D at v1.0 on the first day it was available for purchase:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHp7C2Ccu94

which engendered the opensource node editor Grasshopper eventually expanding to a ménagerie of animal-named support applications.


Rhino 3d was the first 3d modeling app I had ever used. I was in high school. It was so hard :-) but very cool.

Used to take an hour to render a simple teapot. I could probably render that in realtime now.


Yeah, I used to have to borrow my son's gaming computer to calculate toolpaths in pyCAM....

Some neighbors spray poison ivy --- I just cover it with stones/bricks when I see it.

Essay on this at https://www.folklore.org/On_Xerox,_Apple_and_Progress.html

My wife's aunt ran one of the largest installation of Xerox Alto machines and her budget was very glad of the chance to switch to the Mac (the Lisa was _not_ a competitive option).


Tried the prompt:

>A geometry app with nodes which interact based on their coordinates which may be linked to describe lines or arcs with side panels for variables and programming constructs.

which resulted in:

https://www.phind.com/search/a-geometry-app-with-nodes-ed416...

which didn't seem workable at all, and notable was lacking in a side panel.


Hi, I just clicked the link and it's showing up for me. Could you refresh?

While I initially noted it as not showing up, after a while, things did appear, but what I'm getting isn't what I would consider usable, and in particular, the requested areas for values and variables do _not_ appear at the side as requested and it's not workable for my needs/expectations.

I agree that this answer was a bit wacky. Phind Fast is the fast and free model. Selecting Phind Large, GPT-5.1, and Claude models would be better for a modeling task like this.

It shows up, but like most of AI Slop it is not working. As the commenter said

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