Using programmatic authoring the document source is a program written in a programming language.
By executing the program, the document source program is transformed to another format, typically HTML.
Expected advantages of programmatic authoring
We can use all the 'programming tricks' in the web authoring area
Authoring of complex materials parallels creation of non-trivial programs
Programmatic authoring is probably not feasible in many main stream languages
Java, C++, C, Pascal, Perl, ...
Using programmatic authoring the power of a programming language is available everywhere in the document,
and at any time in the authoring process