Teaching Programming

[Dave Angel]

alex23 wrote:
> Ed Keith <e_... at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   
>> Knuth wanted the generated source to be unreadable, so people would not be tempted to edit the generated code.
>>     
>
> This is my biggest issue with Knuth's view of literate programming. If
> the generated source isn't readable, am I just supposed to trust it?
> How can I tell if an error lies in my expression of the algorithm or
> in the code generation itself?
>
>   
Do you think a compiler is required to make its object file conveniently 
readable?  Do you regularly read the machine code generated by your C 
compiler?  I admit I've frequently studied compiler output over the 
years, but I think I'm very unusual in that respect.  I've never 
disassembled a python byte code file, though I wrote tools to display 
and manipulate both java byte code files and dot-net (before it was 
called that).

I think the question really boils down to whether you trust the compiler.

DaveA