I am super excited by https://observablehq.com which has made an out-of-the-box literate programming environment for Javascript zero configuration (like Knuth's it has a non-linear execution order). Since switching to literate programming I have found myself adopting a documentation-driven-development methodology, where I ponder about the purpose of the notebook in the introduction, and because I reread it every time I open the notebook, the clarity of the software goes up, which also feedbacks into the ongoing development process too.

It takes a little while before habits change, but I think I have learnt more in the last year at age 40 than I did in my first year of undergraduate aged 19.

An aspect of Observable which is particularly compelling since Knuth is the fact that inter-notebook dependencies are hyperlinks, so these are not standalone literate programming artifacts, but they are a graph of explanation too. You can learn a lot by surfing notebook dependencies. Bundling code with documentation is such a win.

The other thing about Observable is the cells are reactive, so your documentation is not necessarily static either. You can provide animated interactive explanations too.

More info on the different types of content you can embed

https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/cell-modes

More info on the spreadsheet like execution ordering:

https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/observables-not-javas... More info on the literate programming support