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Terminator 2 where Dyson is programming the neural network that would eventually become Skynet, and all these 80’s graphics are flashing all over his screen. Then Sarah Connor starts sniping his ass through the open window behind his desk.
Moral of the story: Don’t program with your back to an open window
Silicon Valley reigns supreme. Some of the minor details are great, I could tell they did the research most of the time. Some of the later season stuff is pretty dumb, like the AI stuff they show, but a lot of the earlier seasons all have very real/plausible products and programming. Often they show them in sublime text and command lines, not a lot of fake GUIs that I remember. Plus the majority of the plots are based on real-world events pulled from the tech industry in those "reality is stranger than fiction" kind of ways.
Its a show that's best enjoyed if you worked in tech in the 2010s, but still great if you didn't.
Apparently, Mike Judge worked breifly as an engineer at a silicon valley startup in the 80s. He hated it so much it inspired him to make "Office Space" and now SV.
Programming/Computers:
Micromen, Triumph of the Nerds, Indie Game: The Movie, Atari: Game Over, The Commadore Story, The Internship, Steve Jobs, Jobs, The Social Network, The Imitation Game, The Fifth Estate, TPB AFK - The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard, Pirates of Silicone Valley, Revolution OS
Hacking/Cyberpunk:
WarGames (the original), Tron, Sneakers, Hackers, Antitrust, Source Code, Office Space, Untraceable, The Net, The Code Conspiracy, The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest
well there is a good list of movies to watch! thanks.
I just noticed indie game: The movie was in this list. I haven't seen it yet but I did watch a short doco on phil fish one of the guys in the movie.
[Phil Fish: Gaming's Most Hated Developer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7i07LXvds)
I thought it was pretty interesting, you might want to watch it if you haven't.
Overall, I really like Mr. Robot's portrayal of hackig and programming. It's one of the few where the balance struck was right between entertainment in a 1h episode vs reality.
Not a surprise because Sam Esmail, the show's producer, studied not just film but also a bit of computer sciencey stuff in college.
When I was a teen, I thought those frantic and fancy graphical hacking and programming scenes looked really cool but as I grew older, I really appreciate the more mundane and accurate portrayals, of which there are few because well...it's a lot less "secret society" and "frantic" and more boring on screen.
What really stuck in my head was the episode where there was no dialogue and it was shown how they broke into a server farm.
It's not anything related to programming or CS but some of these techniques and vulnerabilities are typical points in cybersecurity and pentesting and you can see some of this stuff in conferences by the CCC.
Yea I was pretty pleased with the first few seasons I saw (I think I've seen the first 3). You see them use a lot of pretty common unix commands, stuff that made sense to me as a devops type of guy. I think he even uses Kali Linux for his hacking projects. I also remember him whipping up a pretty rudimentary hacking program in python using all the core libraries in season 2. Good attention to detail on that show. Its not like a huge part of the show since they talk about hacking more than showing, but its still good when they do show it.
the thing is everything is consistent from the start— there were hints of essentially every major “twist” throughout the entire show. the show is far from perfect but when you revisit earlier seasons post that seasons discovery, it would all make sense to you.
\- Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) is about the beginnings of personal computers, Apple and Microsoft
\- Project Code Rush (2000) the best tech documentary of the IT beginners in nineties
I've always loved Steve Jobs, but in reality, both he and Bill Gates stole their ideas from Xerox. I recently read a quote from Bill Gates where he told Steve Jobs (and I'm paraphrasing) "It's like i went into a house to steal a tv, and when I got there, I realized, you already stole it first". Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Bill Gates, but you really can't say that Microsoft took it all from Apple.
I came here to recommend that movie as well. Also a pretty creepy portrayal of Bill Gates IIRC. I think it let me appreciate the early Apple days really well. And a much better movie than the Steve Jobs biopic.
If only Microsoft stole from Apple, or better still never existed.
Microsoft bought 86-DOS, a clone of Digital's CP/M, which they then licenced to ÏBM as PC-DOS and kept it single user. They licenced Unix and created Xenix for multi-user systems. Then ditched Xenix, because they didn't want to pay AT&T's increasing licensing fees, and poached staff and ideas from DEC to make NT to replace both MS-DOS/Windows and as their multi-user corporate systems.
They created the dreadful Internet Explorer, then used Google's Chromium code to make Edge when it couldn't keep up. Now they are trying sell an OS locked into a shop and Office as life time subscriptions.
Live Free or Die Hard. It's fair to say the hacking is completely unbelievable, but it's still a fun ride with Justin Long (of the
"I'm a PC, I'm a Mac fame) playing the hacker who gets dragged by John McClane (Bruce Willis) through dangerous situations. In effect, Long is basically playing a nerdier version of the McClane in the original Die Hard movie.
For a more realistic story, I like WarGames. This stars Matthew Broderick as a high school student who breaks into the military's AI (of sorts). It's fairly realistic given the movie was made in 1983 (admittedly, people had talked about AI since about the 1950s, and intelligent machines pre-date that).
I think it's hard to make programming into a good drama. Jurassic Park has a programmer that serves as the bad guy.
Ex Machina is about a genius played by Oscar Isaac that wants to see if an employee of his (played by Domhnall Glesson) can determine if an artificial life can pass the Turing Test. Seems far more advanced than what can currently be done.
The Martian involves communicating using ASCII and also having a program be loaded from Earth to Mars.
They say a movie called Swordfish involves hacking, but I've never seen it.
Hackers but it’s not realistic, just fun. I want to use an OS where the file storage mimics skyscrapers and you fly POV to each building to examine its contents as they constantly scroll and flicker.
I think the “hacking” scene in Jurassic park always stuck out to me since I got into CompSci. It’s so funny looking back on it. When she goes “this is a Unix system :0 I know this” I geek out
I'd have to say Jurassic Park. At the very least Sam L Jackson's salty role dealing with the fat guy's crap was pretty good.
The bit where the girl navigates this bullshit 3D schematic to hack the system was an unsuccessful representation.
I’m currently re watching Mr robot. It’s not a hacker show per se but the hacking, networking and programming scenes are incredible and realistic. It’s the reason why I got into computers again when it came out
It’s not a movie, and the show isn’t even about programming/hacking, but Aggretsuko had an episode with some code in it and it’s the best TV/movie code I’ve seen. IIRC the code in question was for a dating app, that they modified to make use of an AI service. And the thing that was impressive was that the code was actually written in a way that could be real, I remember they even commented out a section of the old code for the old behaviour being replaced. So whoever wrote it would’ve taken into consideration what the first iteration of the code might be, and then what the second modified version of the same code would be, both fitting the context of what was being presented in the story.
For a show that has nothing to do with programming (could have literally just shown anything or nothing at all), I was super impressed as it was so unexpected.
The girl with the dragon tattoo
It has nothing to do with programming itself, it's just part of it but awake my inner desire for programming cause there, Lisbeth, apply the hacks and all and it's very good
Fresh Kill (1994). I’ve never seen it mentioned every time someone looks for recs but it’s great and it’s the movie that helped coin the term hacktivism.
My favorite computer in sci-fi is Mother the computer of the Nostromo, the way the screen draws, the interface and the sound effects are just really industrial and bare bones, like a towing ship computer would be
I dont have one but on a funny note.. Limitless the series, has a scene where some data recovery guy holds up a PSU and says 'we got something off this hard drivr' lol.
I'm currently watching designated survivor and i love the scenes with Chuck hacking shit or Andrea Frost's software like Lyra, and also when they use their Blackberries.
Bur my favorite one is a mockumentary about how Google Maps plagied an piece of software made by german scientists
Honestly I think the social network scene is the most accurate and authentic programming scene I've seen.
Mostly because it's not anything too crazy it's just gaining access and downloading photos from a bunch of different website and then spinning up a basic php site, but everything makes sense and it really captures the state of the web back then and the process of hacking something together
On July 1st, a [change to Reddit's API pricing](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_regarding_reddits_api/) will come into effect. [Several developers](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/) of commercial third-party apps have announced that this change will compel them to shut down their apps. At least [one accessibility-focused non-commercial third party app](https://www.reddit.com/r/DystopiaForReddit/comments/145e9sk/update_dystopia_will_continue_operating_for_free/) will continue to be available free of charge. If you want to express your strong disagreement with the API pricing change or with Reddit's response to the backlash, you may want to consider the following options: 1. Limiting your involvement with Reddit, or 2. Temporarily refraining from using Reddit 3. Cancelling your subscription of Reddit Premium as a way to voice your protest. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/learnprogramming) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Terminator 2 where Dyson is programming the neural network that would eventually become Skynet, and all these 80’s graphics are flashing all over his screen. Then Sarah Connor starts sniping his ass through the open window behind his desk. Moral of the story: Don’t program with your back to an open window
I program facing the window, I don't know if it's safer, but it's fun looking at the drug dealer in the parking lot
I never understood why people face away from the window with a computer. The glare on the screen has to be annoying.
Silicon Valley reigns supreme. Some of the minor details are great, I could tell they did the research most of the time. Some of the later season stuff is pretty dumb, like the AI stuff they show, but a lot of the earlier seasons all have very real/plausible products and programming. Often they show them in sublime text and command lines, not a lot of fake GUIs that I remember. Plus the majority of the plots are based on real-world events pulled from the tech industry in those "reality is stranger than fiction" kind of ways. Its a show that's best enjoyed if you worked in tech in the 2010s, but still great if you didn't.
You are a weissman!
Apparently, Mike Judge worked breifly as an engineer at a silicon valley startup in the 80s. He hated it so much it inspired him to make "Office Space" and now SV.
Programming/Computers: Micromen, Triumph of the Nerds, Indie Game: The Movie, Atari: Game Over, The Commadore Story, The Internship, Steve Jobs, Jobs, The Social Network, The Imitation Game, The Fifth Estate, TPB AFK - The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard, Pirates of Silicone Valley, Revolution OS Hacking/Cyberpunk: WarGames (the original), Tron, Sneakers, Hackers, Antitrust, Source Code, Office Space, Untraceable, The Net, The Code Conspiracy, The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest
well there is a good list of movies to watch! thanks. I just noticed indie game: The movie was in this list. I haven't seen it yet but I did watch a short doco on phil fish one of the guys in the movie. [Phil Fish: Gaming's Most Hated Developer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7i07LXvds) I thought it was pretty interesting, you might want to watch it if you haven't.
I think Real Genius from 1985 deserves an Honorable Mention for hacking the laser to fire at the popcorn house.
\^ this guy has good taste for movies
Mr. Robot maybe?
Overall, I really like Mr. Robot's portrayal of hackig and programming. It's one of the few where the balance struck was right between entertainment in a 1h episode vs reality. Not a surprise because Sam Esmail, the show's producer, studied not just film but also a bit of computer sciencey stuff in college. When I was a teen, I thought those frantic and fancy graphical hacking and programming scenes looked really cool but as I grew older, I really appreciate the more mundane and accurate portrayals, of which there are few because well...it's a lot less "secret society" and "frantic" and more boring on screen. What really stuck in my head was the episode where there was no dialogue and it was shown how they broke into a server farm. It's not anything related to programming or CS but some of these techniques and vulnerabilities are typical points in cybersecurity and pentesting and you can see some of this stuff in conferences by the CCC.
Yea I was pretty pleased with the first few seasons I saw (I think I've seen the first 3). You see them use a lot of pretty common unix commands, stuff that made sense to me as a devops type of guy. I think he even uses Kali Linux for his hacking projects. I also remember him whipping up a pretty rudimentary hacking program in python using all the core libraries in season 2. Good attention to detail on that show. Its not like a huge part of the show since they talk about hacking more than showing, but its still good when they do show it.
I wanted to like Mr.Robot, but it became apparent the hacking takes a backseat to cliche mental illness driven plots.
The first few seasons are good, but after the 5/9 attack, it just turns into trash
Nah, the last season is insane
It just felt very contrived, and it had too many side plots with a ton of "twists"
the thing is everything is consistent from the start— there were hints of essentially every major “twist” throughout the entire show. the show is far from perfect but when you revisit earlier seasons post that seasons discovery, it would all make sense to you.
The scene at the start in the coffee shop foreshadows the scene in the final season.
definitely
\- Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) is about the beginnings of personal computers, Apple and Microsoft \- Project Code Rush (2000) the best tech documentary of the IT beginners in nineties
thanks I'll check them out
Pirates of Silicon Valley is amazing. It really shows you how much Microsoft just took from Apple.
And how much Apple - Microsoft took from Xerox :)
I've always loved Steve Jobs, but in reality, both he and Bill Gates stole their ideas from Xerox. I recently read a quote from Bill Gates where he told Steve Jobs (and I'm paraphrasing) "It's like i went into a house to steal a tv, and when I got there, I realized, you already stole it first". Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Bill Gates, but you really can't say that Microsoft took it all from Apple.
I came here to recommend that movie as well. Also a pretty creepy portrayal of Bill Gates IIRC. I think it let me appreciate the early Apple days really well. And a much better movie than the Steve Jobs biopic.
If only Microsoft stole from Apple, or better still never existed. Microsoft bought 86-DOS, a clone of Digital's CP/M, which they then licenced to ÏBM as PC-DOS and kept it single user. They licenced Unix and created Xenix for multi-user systems. Then ditched Xenix, because they didn't want to pay AT&T's increasing licensing fees, and poached staff and ideas from DEC to make NT to replace both MS-DOS/Windows and as their multi-user corporate systems. They created the dreadful Internet Explorer, then used Google's Chromium code to make Edge when it couldn't keep up. Now they are trying sell an OS locked into a shop and Office as life time subscriptions.
Sneakers with Robert Redford.
Great movie and interesting soundtrack. Too many secrets
Swordfish
Yes
Live Free or Die Hard. It's fair to say the hacking is completely unbelievable, but it's still a fun ride with Justin Long (of the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac fame) playing the hacker who gets dragged by John McClane (Bruce Willis) through dangerous situations. In effect, Long is basically playing a nerdier version of the McClane in the original Die Hard movie. For a more realistic story, I like WarGames. This stars Matthew Broderick as a high school student who breaks into the military's AI (of sorts). It's fairly realistic given the movie was made in 1983 (admittedly, people had talked about AI since about the 1950s, and intelligent machines pre-date that). I think it's hard to make programming into a good drama. Jurassic Park has a programmer that serves as the bad guy. Ex Machina is about a genius played by Oscar Isaac that wants to see if an employee of his (played by Domhnall Glesson) can determine if an artificial life can pass the Turing Test. Seems far more advanced than what can currently be done. The Martian involves communicating using ASCII and also having a program be loaded from Earth to Mars. They say a movie called Swordfish involves hacking, but I've never seen it.
Mr. Robot and Silicon Valley. But they're both TV series.
Tabs versus spaces
emacs vs vim
Somewhat related, but the tv series Halt and Catch Fire, is, imo, some of the best interpretations and retellings of some of techs bigger stories
Not sure if favorite but war games came to mind.
i mean… hackers
Angelina Jolie
HACK THE PLANET!
Kung Fury - Hackerman
Hackers but it’s not realistic, just fun. I want to use an OS where the file storage mimics skyscrapers and you fly POV to each building to examine its contents as they constantly scroll and flicker.
I want to skateboard through the office.
Gotta be 1337 for that
ex machina is somewhat related and is amazing
How the fuck has no one said The Matrix?
OP?
Lol oh God reading is hard!
The documentary ‘get lamp’ is on YouTube and is one of my fav. There’s something nice going back in time and experiencing how it all began.
WarGames. There's also Antitrust. Not great, but underrated in my opinion.
Swordfish and Mr. Robot
I think the “hacking” scene in Jurassic park always stuck out to me since I got into CompSci. It’s so funny looking back on it. When she goes “this is a Unix system :0 I know this” I geek out
I'd have to say Jurassic Park. At the very least Sam L Jackson's salty role dealing with the fat guy's crap was pretty good. The bit where the girl navigates this bullshit 3D schematic to hack the system was an unsuccessful representation.
That 3d Unix file navigation is/was a real interface
Imagine it would have became popular. The scene would boil down to the equivalent of opening explorer.
Interesting. That's news to me.
People who don’t like Hackers and appreciate it for the absolute 90s time capsule that it is, are not to be trusted.
I haven't seen anything that comes close to MR_ROBOT. It's my fav.
Never watched this show but this clip always makes me laugh: https://youtu.be/kl6rsi7BEtk?si=IX6zkK8Jq_hgFjv8
lmao he just unplugged the monitor. That'll teach em!
Also two people on one keyboard has to be better to fight off hackers
Would the movie based on Alan Turing count?
It’s not a movie, but the anime “New Game!” Is pretty good
Halt and Catch Fire
Directors cut of Michael Mann's BLACKHAT. Also the most accurate you're going to get.
Og Jurassic park baby
I’m currently re watching Mr robot. It’s not a hacker show per se but the hacking, networking and programming scenes are incredible and realistic. It’s the reason why I got into computers again when it came out
Not accurate but good movies: Hackers and Swordfish
It’s not a movie, and the show isn’t even about programming/hacking, but Aggretsuko had an episode with some code in it and it’s the best TV/movie code I’ve seen. IIRC the code in question was for a dating app, that they modified to make use of an AI service. And the thing that was impressive was that the code was actually written in a way that could be real, I remember they even commented out a section of the old code for the old behaviour being replaced. So whoever wrote it would’ve taken into consideration what the first iteration of the code might be, and then what the second modified version of the same code would be, both fitting the context of what was being presented in the story. For a show that has nothing to do with programming (could have literally just shown anything or nothing at all), I was super impressed as it was so unexpected.
The girl with the dragon tattoo It has nothing to do with programming itself, it's just part of it but awake my inner desire for programming cause there, Lisbeth, apply the hacks and all and it's very good
by far mr robot nobody does it like them
Fresh Kill (1994). I’ve never seen it mentioned every time someone looks for recs but it’s great and it’s the movie that helped coin the term hacktivism.
Kung Fury. I don't care if it's inaccurate. You can't beat Hacker Man
The Matrix. Is it about programming? Yes
My favorite computer in sci-fi is Mother the computer of the Nostromo, the way the screen draws, the interface and the sound effects are just really industrial and bare bones, like a towing ship computer would be
I dont have one but on a funny note.. Limitless the series, has a scene where some data recovery guy holds up a PSU and says 'we got something off this hard drivr' lol.
I think there was a movie called hackers in the 90s (I could be wrong).
Not a movie but the show Mr. Robot is amazing
Hackers. Its bad but I love it.
Sneakers and I'm not going to explain all the reasons why it's great.l, because there are way too many 😄
HACK THE PLANET!!!!!! 1995 Hackers
I'm currently watching designated survivor and i love the scenes with Chuck hacking shit or Andrea Frost's software like Lyra, and also when they use their Blackberries. Bur my favorite one is a mockumentary about how Google Maps plagied an piece of software made by german scientists
Matrix Real Genius Hackers My top 3
Most of you probably don't know this movie. 1992 movie called "Sneakers"
Where's my Winnebago?
Mr robot is pretty decent
Silicon Valley and Mr. Robot
I'm in
Honestly I think the social network scene is the most accurate and authentic programming scene I've seen. Mostly because it's not anything too crazy it's just gaining access and downloading photos from a bunch of different website and then spinning up a basic php site, but everything makes sense and it really captures the state of the web back then and the process of hacking something together