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Ask HN: What piece of code could deserve a Pulitzer prize?
In an interview about literate programming (the concept that programs are not just written for computers to read, but for humans to read too), Knuth said that he hoped that one day there would be a Pulitzer prize for programs.
If there would be one, which piece of code do you think would deserve it?
- Stevvo 5y agoPublic Key Cryptography could have it for services to journalism.
- baby 5y agonot what I'm asking :P
- version_five 5y agoWhat obviously comes to mind is Jonesforth because it's a very well thought out and famous example of literate programming: https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesforth.S https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort... That said, I dont see the parallel with the Pulitzer... it's for investigative journalism no? Maybe there is a jupyter notebook somewhere that really combines data analysis with journalistic analysis, although I've never seen, and don't really believe in, journalism that relies on any deep data analysis.
- baby 5y agoI don't think Pulitzer is only for journalism. I actually don't know much about it, but Wikipedia says: > The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature and musical composition within the United States
- version_five 5y agoI was wrong about investigative journalism being the only category https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year The categories are Journalism, and Books/Music/Drama. I don't see an obvious place where literate programming would fit, unless it specifically was in service of one of those categories.
- adminscoffee 5y agomaybe they are adding a new category at some point
- willcipriano 5y agoI'd give it to TempleOS[0] personally. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
- LarryMade2 5y agoWikipedia would be a good candidate.
- bjourne 5y agoThe source code for the J language's interpreter.