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Re:Physically Based Rendering: From theory to implementation... by corysama on Thursday March 17, 2022 @07:31PM (#30717015)
Fun Facts:

The book is a "literate program". You can run the book through a parser and it will give you the compliable working source of the complete renderer it is describing. https://www.pbr-book.org/3ed-2018/Introduction/Literate_Prog...

It is the only book to win an Oscar https://www.oscars.org/news/19-scientific-and-technical-achi...

Re:Physically Based Rendering: From theory to implementation... by svat on Thursday March 17, 2022 @10:00PM (#30717971)
When Knuth came up with the term/idea of "literate programming" and the idea of programs as works of literature, in the paper (http://literateprogramming.com/knuthweb.pdf) 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" and thanks Donald Knuth for literate programming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d9juPsv1QU

Knuth has repeated the joke/remark (https://www.pbr-book.org):

> “This book has deservedly won an Academy Award. I believe it should also be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.”