Org-babel lets you do as the name suggests: manage different
snippets of code written in different languages from a single master
file. So you can have your lisp code for emacs, your Haskell code
for xmonad, your shell script fu for bash, your custom python
scripts—whatever you have—all in one place, fully documented in
an easy markdown-like syntax.
Babel accomplishes this by parsing source blocks in an org mode
document.
This can be especially helpful for replicating configurations across
multiple servers in a private cloud.
Additional resources:
So you can have source code from virtual any language, and once
“tangled” these unique snippets of code can be sent to local and/or
remote locations or run in place.
For the purposes of this tutorial, the code blocks are being tangled
and sent to individual configuration files for emacs and bash.
Because the tangle operation can write files that don’t exist
already, this makes it easy to re-create your work environment in
multiple locations. Just carry one file with you from workstation
to workstation. Likewise, you could version control your master
file and host it remotely.