At our first meeting of 1996, Mike Elliott will describe a new programming technique called Literate Programming. The underlying philosophy of this approach is that the readability of software should be foremost. To that end, several language-independent Literate Programming tools have been developed. A programmer documents his programming concepts, using code scraps as appropriate, in whatever sequence best conveys his meaning. The tools then combine the scraps automatically into programs suitable for compilation. Maintenance is done using the original concept document, not the combined programs.