You talk as if you had scientific proof that literate programming is objectively better, and I was the weirdo contradicting it without bringing any scientific proof.

Fact is, you don't have any proof at all, you just have your intuition and experience. And I have mine.

> It also says nothing about the clearly demonstrated value of redundancy.

Clearly demonstrated, as in your example of "Calculate the sum of one and one"? I wouldn't call that a clear demonstration.

> This is gatekeeping code by making it less understandable

I don't feel like I am making it less understandable. My opinion is that a professional worker should have the required level of competence (otherwise they are not a professional in that field). In software engineering, we feed code to a compiler, and we trust that the compiler makes sure that the machine executes the code we write. The role of the software engineer is to understand that code.

Literate programming essentially says "I am incapable of writing code that is understandable, ever, so I always need to explain it in a natural language". Or "I am incapable of reading code, so I need it explained in a natural language". My experience is that good code is readable by competent software engineers without explaining everything. But not only that: code is more readable when it is more concise and not littered with comments.

> and essentially an admission that code with comments is easier to understand.

I disagree again. Code with comment is easier to understand for the people who cannot understand it without the comments. Now the question is, again: are those people competent to handle code professionally? Because if they don't understand the code without comments, many times they will just have to trust the comments. If they used the comments to actually understand the code, pretty quickly they would be competent enough to not require the comments. Which means that at the point where they need it, they are not yet professionals, but rather apprentices.