Ask HN: What piece of code could deserve a Pulitzer prize?

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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?

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What 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/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.

I 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

I was wrong about investigative journalism being the only category

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.

maybe they are adding a new category at some point

Public Key Cryptography could have it for services to journalism.

not what I'm asking :P

The source code for the J language's interpreter.

Wikipedia would be a good candidate.

I'd give it to TempleOS[0] personally.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

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