2013 Sci-Tech Awards: Matt Pharr, Greg Humphreys and Pat Hanrahan

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Recommends tinco · 2015-08 · on “Show HN: A toy ray tracer in Rust”

I didn't know that Physically Based Rendering was introduced as a book, and that book is a literate program (as in, you can compile the book and get a physically based renderer as a binary) that was so influential that it received an academy award(!). There's a video of two famous actors announcing them, being professionals they explain exactly what the book is about convincingly despite not having a clue what they are talking about: [this video] In their receiving speech they give a shout out to Donald Knuth for pioneering literate programming.

Cites corysama · 2014-05 · on “Questions for Donald Knuth”

A literate program, Physically Based Rendering, recently became the first book to win an Academy Award for it's technical contributions to the film industry. In the acceptance speech, the writers thanked Knuth for the concept. [this video] The book can be compiled into the production-quality renderer [LINK]

Cites taeric · 2017-01 · on “A Paper Algorithm Notation”

I can't claim you are wrong. But this is so non-intuitive to me that it hurts. I get why "covered ground" for text books would be easier to do. But many textbooks should be pushing the field, as well. Right? And I fully note that the book I linked to is exceptional. It won a oscar.[1] And was basically required reading at pixar, if I recall. [1] [this video]

Cites svat · 2021-02 · on “Noweb – A Simple, Extensible Tool for Literate Programming”

One of the problems with literate programming is that everyone who wants to write literate programs seems to want to write their own literate programming system. This was the conclusion of a short-lived (running to 5 issues) column of literate programs in the Communications of the ACM (1987–1990), by Christopher J. Van Wyk: > Unfortunately, no one has yet volunteered to write a program using another’s system for literate programming. A fair conclusion from my mail would be that one must write one’s own system before one can write a literate program, and that makes me wonder how widespread literate programming is or will ever become. This column will continue only if I hear from people who us

Cites svat · 2022-03 · on “Physically Based Rendering: From theory to implementation (2016)”

When Knuth came up with the term/idea of "literate programming" and the idea of programs as works of literature, in the paper ( [LINK] ) he joked (I think?) that he hoped that, just as there are Pulitzer prizes for literature, there may one day be Pulitzer prizes awarded to computer programs. Well, reality is even stranger than imagination: no computer program has won a Pulitzer prize, but this computer program won an Oscar! Here's a video of the awards ceremony, where Kristen Bell and Michael B. Jordan introduce the recipients, and at 2:12 Matt Pharr comes up and says "needless to say, when we started writing a book we never expected an Academy Award would be the end result of that effort"