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Realistic Portrayals of Software Programmers?
lwbecker2 asks: "Warren Harrison has written a thought-provoking editorial piece on The Software Developer as Movie Icon. He explores the fact that new entrants to Computer Science curriculum are typically clueless about what 'real' developers actually do. While researching the issue of why this is the case, he determined that some potential CS degree seekers are forming opinions from portrayals in movies and cinema. He describes what he asserts to be inaccurate portrayals of developers in War Games, TRON, and The Net, and asks for input and opinions on 'the impact of the cinema and television on new software developers' expectations, as well as learn of any films that do a better job of portraying our profession...' I am sure Slashdot readers have some input on this, and I am curious if people believe _any_ movie has acurately portrayed software developers?"
I hacked the gibson.....
I guess if you join the military and do hacking for the Gov... might be some sort of accurate portrayal
... are so obvious here that no one needs to make any. If you do, I might set the building on fire.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
was pretty accurate.
Didn't a recent poll show that >60% of slashdot readers had no coding experience whatsoever?
Most of the software people I know look just like Hugh Jackman, get to hook up with Halle Berry, and routinely do neat secret agent stuff.
Or at least I wish they did. Office Space has the most accurate portrayal of programmers I've ever seen in a movie.
Two words : Office Space
(The sad part is, it's probably the closest to reality I've seen yet)
comes immediately to mind.
Michael... BOLTON?!?
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Right here
But it was so boring it never got published.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
revenge of the nerds.
.. speaking for myself; blonde hair, blue eyed strapping young lad. 5'11", 180 lbs, 14" penis.
Oh were these supposed to be real or imagined portrayals?
Trolling is a art,
i also thought Office space was the closest.
Seriously, that movie minus the burning building was the most accurate representation I've seen yet.
--I hate big sigs.
Other side of the spectrum anyway, if too far.
Want a movie about what programmers have to go through on a daily basis? Check out "Office Space"
Has the film industry portrayed any normal person accurately? No. Normal people are boring.
Computer guys are the ones that hack into computers in a minimum of keystrokes, and say "We're in." And they always develop some evil artificial intelligence that threatens the world, and they can get incredible detail from a blurry photo simply by saying "Enhancing." Everybody knows this stuff.
I don't think the portrayal is inaccurate at all. But then I'm an EE.
...
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
The diff is that movie programmers are cool and do cool things. Real programmers and fucked up nerds who will bore you with inane trivia about babylon-5 at the drop of a hat.
Office Space is much closer to reality than fiction for programmers, even though they are a sidebar in the story. Most people in programming are not going to be sitting in their own world, and will have to be interactive in an office environment. In most cases, you better get used to the drugery of TPS reports and interacting with people from a wide variety of departments rather than slamming out code.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
but i think of fight club.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I feel that the movie "Pi" is an accurate portrayal of software developers. After the first couple days of each week, listening to the sales manager tell every potential customer that we can do absolutely anything virtually for free and yesterday, I wish I could drill a hole in my skull too.
Do cop shows accurately depict cops?
Do westerns accurately depict cowboys?
Do war movies accurately depict soldiers?
Does pr0n accurately depict sex?
The list goes on...
What self-respecting developer hasn't pictured himself immersed in a high-tech world interacting with characters and enviroments controlled by a hostile master control program, Fighting for change against impossible odds?
.NET developers are you?
Oh wait, you aren't reffering to
There is no spork.
by far the most accurate to date...
The basic problem is that simple stories require simple characters, and generally, we're not talking Jane Austen where computers are involved.
Display a computer programmer that works out, or has a family, etc., that takes time out from the CG and explosions. It also confuses the stupid audience that flocks to the picture...
Having said that, I thought Hugh Jackman's programmer in Swordfish was presented as pretty cool, even the rest of the movie was totally goat.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Office Space.
justin
Those nerds that Matthew Broderick went to ask questions of in Wargames.
The fat hacker in Jurassic Park.
In enemy of the state there was some guy (Jack Black) in a van.
On and on...
--
It shows programmers working their asses off on some new communications system...
if films != reality and tv != reality and nonFictionBooks != reality then ( Welcome to life. )
"Antitrust" was a relatively good portrail...
Any takers?
I'd read the article, but I'm too busy hunched over a desk writing code to keep NSA from invading my brain.
10: Get tinfoil
20: Apply to head
30: Return to 10
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Accurate portrayal of people's real life jobs in movies would just be boring anyway.
I'm convinced the prediction for Mr. Gates in the South Park movie will eventually come to pass.
Hollywood doesn't portray anything or anyone accurately, not just programmers, but secret agents, scientists (the most dangerous profession, according to the movies), police officers, psychiatrists, airline pilots, women, and vegetarians as well... even "normal" people are somehow made extra-normal on the screen.
If you look to films and television for career guidance, chances are you wouldn't make a good programmer anyway.
Most of the programmers I work with are not uber geeky. In fact most are musicians, artists and people who just kind of fell into it.
Most of here think of programmers as guys or gals who build their own computer and install linux for fun. The kind that would know what the a binary tree is, but most are not like this at all. Most don't have computer science majors, and in some cases are better programers because of it.
On a side note I feel like these types of people are missing from the open source community. The reasons for that are many, but mostly because the programming tools are a little too powerful and a little less friendly. We need people who don't really care about how perl or other languages work under the hood, and just care about making programs that are easy to use, and actually do what your average user really needs.
See The Pentagon Wars for a good example of how projects work once you get out into industry.
Michael C. Hollinger
I am sure Slashdot readers have some input on this, and I am curious if people believe _any_ movie has acurately portrayed software developers?
Two words: Booty Call.
I'm sure my m4d sk!llz would get me more programmer groupies if it wasn't for the inaccurate portrayal of my profession in the media. For instance, I type with two hands and never, ever, randomly click a pen. I'm pretty sure these groupies would look like Famke Janssen, too.
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
I wish I could get into the FBI by typing bypass.....
Bob Slydell: If you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door--that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh--after that I sorta space out for an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
While researching the issue of why this is the case, he determined that some potential CS degree seekers are forming opinions from portrayals in movies and cinema.
So once again we take the opinions or ideas of the Galactically Stupid, and assume that it is a problem for the population in general. Nice job.
Forget Office Space, all geeks look like this
Trolling is a art,
Very fat. Or very thin.
Get your own free personal location tracker
everytime Jackman opened his mouth in Swordfish? its like they skimmed websites for words they didn't understand and strung them together in something not quite, but almsot completely not a sentence.
Why not fork?
that Hollywood makes it sound like fun, when it's actually drudgery.
It doesn't get anymore accurate.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0308808
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
Of course it's redundant. Just like the 10 other posts that occurred at 2:26pm.
If I got a cent for evey time I had to crack 128 bit encryption whilst getting a blowjob and with a gun to my head I'd have almost a dollar!
In reply to this post
:
No law says we can't use Linux or Mac. Lots of people do. Most people would agree both are < sarcasm >better than Windows </ sarcasm >.
Has any Linux user ever been able to view?
- www.feedroom.com
- www.nakednews.com
If no, this proves that Linux lages behind windows as far as home users are concerned.
If yes, tell me how did you do it and what player did you use. My Linux real player won't play either of the two sites.....
wouldn't be as cool...
If the mass media has a silly view of programmers, it is too late to change it. When I first saw Jurassic Park, and they had that scene in the outdoor cafe where they start zooming in on the greasy fat unpleasant guy, one phrase was zooming through my mind over and over: "Please God don't let him be the evil computer guy."
Me and God have to have a little talk.
it's not the movie representation of software developers that attracts students to CS courses, since obviously that's only something that real cool geeks pretend to do as a day job - I'm thinking Hackers, Swordfish... those are the kinds of movies that make computer science seem cool - and yeah, there are some of the stereotypes the author of the article is complaining about, but there's also definate suggestions of what he wants - teamwork, and people actually engaging in social interaction (if you can call Halle Berry that...). Anyway, I'd rate both of those above Tron, and *don't* get me started on The Net...
was sorta realistic, except for the whole "Bill Jobs trying to kill OSS developers" sideline...
:)
unless... maybe RMS should watch his back, eh?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
I thought the TRON representation was pretty accurate.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
I wonder if the professors at CIA have the same lament when all their students are expecting to be James Bond.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Weird Science?
It was a documentary, and it was real people, but what do you want, another Office Space comment?
Actually, a pretty accurate portrayal of a programmer in a movie was in Pump Up the Volume, even though he ran a pirate radio station and wasn't a programmer. He worked out of his parent's basement, was a loner, and had a different on-air personality than in real life.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I've always antitrust was very good. No silly interfaces, stunts or anything.
I think it would be a boon to both the tech and movie industries if more movies were made realistically portraying what software engineers do. For all you aspiring screenwriters out there, I was also munching on some "cheetos", although you might want to negotiate a product placement contract for the specific snack.
Office Admin (played by jennifer garner) : "Could you please update your contact information on the corporate webserver."
Software engineer (played by Sean Connery, munching on "Xtreme BBQ Veggie Rinds") : "Of coursh, my darling."
Corporate website (played by richard dreyfuss) : "Beep boop boop beep."
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
That window manager was rather nice.
Best Slashdot Co
After reading through the posts I have realized that I never want see the movie "Office Space" again, nor see those two words in close proximity to one another. Dear lord.
Most people have some idea of what a cop is. They know what the army does. They can identify a firefighter in uniform nine times out of ten.
Outside of the computer industry, nobody knows what a programmer is. They don't know that there's more to computers than Windows, so why should they know about computers?
One portrayal that annoys my wife and me is the portrayal of people in chemical/microbiological suits. The suits always look good on the actors. My wife works in one (she studies ebola). It's a big blue vinyl bag. Not form-fitting. It tends to make you look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man. It's uncomfortable. You have to shout to be heard in them.
So remember, programmers are not the only groups misrepresented. We're probably not the most misrepresented group. Next time you watch a show that includes any real-life profession, ask yourself how close they are to reality. Then complain about programmers being misrepresented.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Although, IIRC Jurassic Park did better than most movies. It was funny to see a supposedly realtime video with a bar at the bottom showing the progress of playing the video file.
well, i think matthew broderick was pretty close to the typical nerd, except he was too attractive and not skinny/fat enough (most nerds have weight problems in one direction or the other, i was 6ft/135lbs until i was 29). whereas the goons that knock on neo's door were way off base: since when did skaterpunks get into programming?
i think the Newman character in Jurrasic Park was close to some of the computer geeks i see at surplus hardware stores and gaming conventions: overweight, overintelligent, egocentric.
then there was Whiz Kids. The albert-from-little-house character was probably pretty close. but that was a TV show, not a movie.
there was another movie, based in the future, i think with the same kid. it was very much like the RUSH song Red Barchetta -- a totalitarian society where a little nerd boy hacks into the main computers and escapes to the country where he finds a car burried under his uncle's barn. It was waaay like the RUSH song, but the nerd boy was pretty close. Anybody remember that movie? I think Lee Majors was the uncle character.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Wow, so software developers AREN'T like the ones portrayed in movies? Hard to believe, because all other occupations are portrayed spot-on in movies! That's why so many kids majoring in achaeology enter college with such strong bull-whip wielding skills. And aspiring paleontologists are ready to combat fearsom velociraptors. And so on... you get the idea.
Surely there must be some kind of laws that prevent inaccuracies in Hollywood movies. Right?
A documentry about a webcompany during and the .com bomb.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Why? Because reality is boring. That's why we have movies and such in the first place.
If I wanted to watch a movie that showed some dude sitting at a computer for long periods of time, downing Mt. Dew and eating all sorts of junk food while trying to properly execute some sort of algorithm to make some modular part of some bigger picture work properly, then yeah... I'd wonder what the hell I was doing wanting to watch that, for one.
just yesterday I did compile a list with all movies on this subject that I know of, with a short rating and a feature list.
>think that shooting nerf guns in the office makes them "cool."
I don't understand. Are you saying that nerf guns aren't cool?
Alright, boys - take away his geek license.
It can't sell reality in the first place. No one, least of all us loyal /. readers would want to go see accurate portrayals of coders.
:-) Sad thing is, the most accurate image of geeks in movies might have been the ones Broderick's character visited in Wargames, the wierdos who panicked when they realized he'd brought a girl... ;-)
Wargames, TRON, The Net, Hackers, Antitrust, and even Office Space are glamorizations of what is otherwise an extremely tedious process. You'd fall asleep in the middle of the movie if they tried to be accurate.
Seriously though, the best way to phase that whole thing would be "I'm not a coder, but I play a script-kiddie on TV".
There is no sig...
Unless of course, you are an agent working for MI6.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Accurate? Swordfish was more accurate!
If DVD movie directors/manufacturers of computer aided or graphic films included some "How To" Documentaries on what it takes to be this sort of film maker or how to create the scenes, in their releases it would be a great start.
I noticed that The new Star Wars films don't include much info like this but other films like Shrek have great information on how films are made.
A great example of a good, non-computer film (education) documentary is the Criterion Release of Stephen Soderbergh's Traffic. There's an incredible section on this DVD that goes into great detail on how many of the scenes were filmed and processed. You get to see how Benico Del Toro's scenes in Mexico were shot versus other geographically different scenes of the film.(Things like this are why DVD's rule!)
Showing how movies are made, in detail, behind the scenes, are a great way to generate interest in Computer/Digital Filmmaking. Especially when said documentaries are added to DVD packages.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Yes : movies don't portray any field very accurately - maybe movies don't depict our field accurately (in part) because what we do isn't very cinematic. Not that it isn't exciting (to us, at the best of times), but that it tends to be pretty cerebral/ invisible/ internal dialog stuff.
Until we launch the missiles, of course. Then it gets pretty dramatic. Ahem.
Who would watch a movie where the main character spent the majority of his day in meetings drinking bad coffee and arguing what is "billable" and what is "non-billable" in the recent deployment of a patch set?
I doubt even being a CIA operative is as sexy and exciting as the movies make it seem. I encourage this. Every once in a great while there is a moment in a fireman's life like "Backdraft" or in a meteorologist's life like "Twister"--not every meteorologist, and not every fireman. It attracts people to the field; their unrealistic expectations are not our problem. They will sort out expectations quickly (certainly before they're done with school, probably before they've even declared majors) and make a decision based on that whether to continue. If it weren't for unrealistic expectations we might get nobody in this field at all.
But then, my salary would be higher. STAMP OUT UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS!!
aside: Wow, 9 Office Space posts already.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I'm not trying to be redundant or anything here...but the second I saw the newspost, I thought of Officespace and how incredibly clever I was coming up with that name. I was thinking of my +5 "Insightful" score and how after people saw how clever I was and how knowledgable with movies I was, my self-confidence would be boosted and I'd be certain to find a woman. However, after clicking "read more" and discovering that 99.9% of all the posts refer to Officespace in one way or another, I was horribly dissappointed. But..I still wanted to post just to show that I'm still clever even if I wasn't the first one.
The anti-salmon
Office Space portrays my career to this point, as well as my wife's, pretty much as accurately as you could ask.
..." whenever she wants something ;)
At work, we made our boss watch it; she even admits she saw herself in Lumbergh; now, she says "Yeaaah, I'm gonna have to ask you to, go ahead and
You mean to tell me that I am not Neo, and that Agent Smith really isn't out to terminate my program?
Neon Lights? Check.
Facist Boss? Check.
Lack of Ambition? Check.
If you ask me, by making coding look unappealing, they reflected the most natural scene for programming as a profession.
I would say that even if you like your job, most people would like to do something else, be elsewhere, etc... I think since we have it so easily that we are more irritable than the rest of the population.
Programming cannot carry though easily in movies because it has a very high learning curve, and it is a very abstract mental concept.
Since most of the population have never even understood what it is to "program", you only have a few choices when making films.
1. Make a movie that is tech realistic and loose most of your audiance because they don't have a clue on what is going on.
2. Make a movie that is 2 years long to introduce the concept of computers, etc.. then tell the story
3. Make a "fluff" piece that most people will understand, but is not accurate the the true nature of IT.
Since the third option is the only economic option, I don't see an accurate representation in films soon.
Although, I do see hope. If we slowly ramp up computer programming enough in movies, we can slowly creep the concept to the viewers over a series of movies, so that after maybe 15 movies, a viewer is able to actually abstract the concept of programming and the culture entrenched in it, in which case, an accurate representation can be protrayed.
Bye!
so you're looking for accurate depictions of software programmers in movies? i hope this helps!
i usually roll out of bed around 11 or noon (up all night clubbin wit da ladies!) and drive to work in my brand new hummer, completely disregarding traffic signals, speed limits and roads in general. assuming there arent any high speed chases with the bad guys on the way, i make it in to work in time for the boss to yell at me again for "violating protocol" again! im such an eXtreme programmer and i do things my way! thats about when the terrorists show up to the building to take my girlfriend hostage, forcing me to have to fight them all with my bare hands and the occasional uzi taken from fallen enemies (everyone else is taken hostage too, so im the only one that can fight). since im so ripped, i can streetfight anyone and win easily! at around 4 or 5 pm i manage to get to the leader and fight him to the death at the top of the building, throwing him off in the process. once i get my woman back, we get it on and then im off to the clubs for the night! but trouble arises at the club......
oh wait, you want honesty? well heres honesty: unless its a comedy, dont make movies about software developers!
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
The movie antitrust comes to mind as a fairly realistic vision of young software developers. A megacorp makes software that can spy on people and eliminates the competition while the kids work on an open source project in a garage. One leaves the group to work for the megacorp.
One movie-like part of the movie is Rachael Leigh Cook as a programmer. I have yet to find any full-time woman programmers which looks like that. Otherwise it does a decent job of portraying programmers.
dude, if some fucknut sees something in a movie or on TV and believes it has any relation to reality causing them to decide to try and become that person the only thing they should be doing is enrolling in wanna-be-actor school.
I know as a tax-payer I was pissed.
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
Really? What was inaccurate about wargames? The plot was fantastical, of course, but the things they did with computers were pretty much realistic (ie, randomly dialing numbers to look for interesting systems) for the 80s. I haven't seen it in a long time, but in my mind it takes the prize for the most plausible mainstream computer movie.
Man, that scene where he rocks out with a bottle of wine and writes a "Worm", or when he "hacks" into a CIA database at gun point. That was so cool.
Forget Mike! Go to college and...
Be like Hugh Jackman!
Tron wasn't that far off for its day, at that time there were a lot fewer large programming projects and as such a lot fewer teams of developers. It was much more common for a programmer to work by himself or herself than it is today.
Also, while War Games obviously wasn't 100% accurate, it was definitely more realistic than the Net, Hackers and a lot of other movies featuring programmers.
Movies aren't even meant to be 100% accurate, they're meant to be entertaining, it just happens that Firefighting and law enforcement are professions that are more entertaining than computer programming so they have to be changed less. Even those professions aren't portrayed accurately though like the article claimed, firemen spend most of their time waiting for fires, not putting them out and when they do put out fires more often than not they don't actually have to save people. Cops are the same way, they're not usually doing drug busts, catching robbers, using their keen investigative wit, going on high speed car chases, getting in shootouts or anything, most police work is driving around and filing papers.
I think Office Space probably is the most accurate portrayal of the life of a programmer there is in any "Movie". Well except for the part about slipping into felony hacking :P But before and up to them getting fired, it was dead on!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Bad Monty Python imitations and references to Star Trek: The Next Generation are the true signs of a realistic software developer.
In every intro level Archaelolgy course I've taken, there is always a comment in the text books on how Archaeology is nothing like the world of Indiana Jones.
Then again, the intro level courses are to weed out people who aren't ready for the rigors of a given dicipline.
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Of course, I'm not 40 yet, but I think I'll be jumping cube walls for quite a few years to come (not the full-height ones you moron - yeah, I know what you're thinking too :).
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Neo is about right -- until he finds out he's the One (although I still maintain that I can fly).
When we see him as a programmer he's:
1) Asleep at his desk, documentation, books, and a PDA strewn around him (A Newton!!). He's got a whole bunch of windows open on his screen (including some sort of prompt). He's got a stereo pumping out music to oversized headphones. And he's asleep on the keyboard. Sounds like me.
2) At work, he sits in a sterile cubicle and gets lectures by a boss who doesn't understand him. Sounds like me sometimes too.
John Ashcroft will be with you in a moment. PLease hold.
Ya, I'm tired of seeing compassionate intelligent presidents in movies. I mean come on, suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
that doesn't make you cool? Years ago I moved my desk. A coworker (who got along with no one) was upset that I was moving near her and went to her boss to complain especially if I was to possibly fire nerf weapons. "I don't do that any more!!! I was just 20 at that time! I'm much for maturely now! I swear. Next time could you complain directly to me. Now our bosses think you're an idiot."
"Real" jobs are seldom shown correctly in movies or TV. How many lawyer/cop/hospital shows are there?
However, even though the jobs aren't shown realistically, is that necessarily wrong? Didn't watching "Voyage of the Mimi" make you want to get into oceanography? Watching "Mr. Wizard" make you want to blow things up? Seeing "101 Dalmations" make you want to get a dalmation? (okay, maybe not, but dalmation sales did increase after the movie was re-released.)
My point is, maybe TV and movies don't show a realistic view of programming/chemistry/life in general. Every job, in some way, involves banging your head against the wall and filling out paperwork for some reason or another.
I'm not advocating lying about what your job really entails, but isn't it a good thing if you can get kids interested in something?
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
Aside from humorous attempts such as Office Space, I think the last thing we want to see in movies is accurate portrayal of programmers... The few places I have seen them have made me cringe. For example, the guy in Jurrasic Park that's stealing the dinosaur embryos.
I mean, think about it: how interesting would it be to watch us surf & post on Slashdot all day?
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Before I got a job as a programmner, and was a dreamy CS major, I invisioned being a programmer as simply writing code with other programmers to do cool stuff.
...and reading/posting /.
Realistically, I spend most of my time mindlessly testing my software, which was not incredibly challenging to write, and going to meetings so people can jabber on about buzzwords.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Although that one scene with Lucy Liu as the dominatrix consultant showed teeming masses of geeky wage slaves, it did have the redeeming quality of her shouting, "Who builds the company's products?! YOU DO!"
I remember watching that at about the exact same time our own tech team was denied free sodas by our pigfarking CTO.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Office Space was perfect in its portrayal of the Geek. The disaffection with office politics, the desire to create something better, the general dislike of the current state of their industry.
Office Space was perfect, though I doubt its ever going to attract anyone into the field. Face it, we have a boring job, that is only exciting if you love logic and puzzles.
Like *that* is ever going to be and exciting box office smash.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Many of the incredible things that happen in computer science happen inside the head.
True inspiration from comes from seeing an individual triumph, e.g. King Vidor's version of The Fountainhead. You don't need a film for that; the internet is the medium. Kids who watched sneakers or hackers and thought that was programming get sorted out when they hit their first serious programming course.
Are we talking about making a film about innovation, or about so called teamwork?
--
Everybody knows all programmers and hackers have girlfriends like this and this.
Early in the film where neo wakes up at his desk surrounded by total chaos in his attick. This is how i wake up every evening after an all nighter coding.
Other than Office Space (obvious), the most accurate movie I can recall (I can't recall much) was Pirates of Silicon Valley. I mean, it's about real people, in a time when they actually developed software.
~Jon~
This space for rent, inquire within.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
Hollywood glammorizes ANY professional field, not just software developers, etc. I remember the first time I learned that Court cases took longer than a few weeks (I was 15y/o, mind you), because I followed the OJ murder trial. My intake of movie drama had preconditioned me to think all Lawyers were as thoughtful and explosive as Tom Cruise was in A Few Good Men, wailing at Nicholson, "I want the truth!" And then Nicholson responds, "You can't handle the truth!" It's practically never the case.
:p
I was (and still am) quite disappointed. My first assumptions about Law were based on movies, which, if you ask any Lawyer, are dramatized to the point of fiction.
Much is the same with Technology. Anyone who's sat through Hackers will tell you how much of a (bad) joke it really is. The other great example is Swordfish, when Hugh Jackman hacks into a computer system in 60 seconds, at gunpoint, with a woman giving him head. Come on
The point is this: Anyone who wishes to join any professional field should realize that work takes effort. If a movie gives you inspiration and/or a desire to look further into something you find interesting, fantastic. Seek out what you dream and live it. But be prepared to find something a little less idealized, something a bit more down to earth.
Two parts:
." is closer to reality than most people would guess.
1. Keanu asleep at the keyboard.
2. "I don't even see the code any more - now it's just blonde, brunette, redhead. .
Not Hollywood though. But still better at portraying IT people .
Well, some of it, anyway: Falling asleep in front of a computer every night, getting chewed out by the boss for coming in too late ...
I think War Games and TRON were pretty good depictions of what programmers are like. But I've never met a programmer that looked like the girl in The Net.
Sleep is for the Weak
Isn't this question a little close to impossible to answer?
If you ask any group about who they are and what they are like, you get one point of view from inside the group, and another point of view from outside. If you ask software developers what they are like, they are observing themselves. It's like the problem in quantam mechanics, where the observer changes the experiment just by observing.
Ask me what I'm like, and I'll tell you. But I can promise you, if you ask me what I'm like, then ask my best friend what I'm like, then ask other friends what I'm like, then ask my clients what I'm like, and ask people who don't like me whta I'm like, they will all give different answers. The least reliable would probably be my own opinion of myself.
I think it's the same with any group -- so if you ask software developers what they are like, you won't get an accurate answer (and I'm not making jokes about the stereotypical poor human interaction skills).
On the other hand, if you focus on the question of, "What do software developers do and what responsibilities do they have?" then you have a much more objective question and can give a much more objective answer. Then you have something specific and non-nebulous to compare to the movies.
All aliens use AppleTalk...
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I know where you're coming from. But face it, it has been proven over and over, the majority of people are utter morons!
All software developers (aka hackers in movies) stand up in their cubicles and shout "I AM INVINCIBLE!" at least 3 times a day!
My friends (mostly engineers) and I were discussing the success of shows like ER, Law and Order, Ally McBeal, Scrubs, etc. It seems like the popular shows are based on doctors, lawyers, or police work.
"Why not a show about engineers?" someone asked.
"Yeah, we could call it 'CR' - Conference Room! They could show us sitting around at boring meetings, eating doughnuts, writing emails and stuff..."
That's when we realized why there are no shows about engineers.
on the monotony side I would definitely say that I am surprised the television version of Dilbert has not been mentioned. I have seen mentions of Pi and Pirates of Silicon Valley. I definitely would consider throwing Revolution OS into the fray. Maybe startup.com as well?
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
secret = code_word == bush
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/
:)
This is about engineers, but might be a good taste.
I was also thinking that perhaps placing some web-cams in a computer lab around the deadline for large projects would be interesting. In my software engineering courses, the groups of students working together going back and forth is a great example of what software development ends up being like.
Seriously, people in STS programs should be taking this as a hint, more studies please!
- Sighuh?
Parodies of the Simpsons Korean artists.
My father is an ex Army helicopter pilot and flight instructor. We just love James Bond movies.
:-)
Whenever there's a computer on screen, I tell him: "Well, actually that's impossible" and why. Whenever there's a helicopter on screen, he tells me: "well, actually, no helicopter is capable of that" and why. Or: "See that Russian soldier? Well, he's using a rifle of the Isreali army, wrong equipment again."
Yeah, I know that it's just a movie, but we get the kicks out of it...
"Golden Eye" was an example, with its wonderful IBM product placement and unique chat software used by the geek and the bond girl. And virtually every modern Bond film includes an impossible or close-to-impossible helicopter stunt.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
From the social skills of most of the programmers' I have seen I'd have to go with "Silence of the Lambs". (After your 10th mountain dew of the morning, I suspect human flesh starts to seem like a good pre-lunch snack!) Of course reality could never actually be put into a hollywood blockbuster.... far too depressing or freaky (Or both). (Scarily enough I share many attributes with my programmer friends - so thats' why I know it would be EXTRA frightening to accurately portray them in film!)
did he expect playing global thermo nuclear war with joshua?
Next we'll get complaints from disappointed British secret agents that they don't get to go to the moon, don't get to go sledding in the alps riding cello covers with pretty foreign girls, don't get to meet sexy women with names that make you blush, etc ad nauseum. Damn you 007.
is the portrayal of malicious software developers a.k.a. crackers a.k.a "hackers". Anyone remember the computer "nerd" in "The Score"? "Golden Eye"? Just plain embarassing.
Due to whatever cultural factors, certain professions etc. receive a disproportionate amount of skewed media coverage. Be grateful if you are not a gay black jewish lawyer with Italian ancestors. On the other hand, if you're a civil engineer, polymer scientist, or music(ol)ologist, for example, you don't exist, as far as the mainstream media are concerned.
Marklar: marklar
I know many people like that. I'm sure that if a policeman asked me, I'd say I don't know them. On the other hand, if any of them looked like Sandra Bullock...
1) The Great Escape.
Martin Lawrence's portrayal was amazing. He wanted revenge, but he is thwarted by a bird - fortunately he is helped by a cat and befriends a funny horse that is lost.
No wonder it won so many awards.
2) Cop and a Half.
I'm not sure any one character took the show - as a whole it was just total perfection. It will go down in history as the greatest film ever made for sure.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Let the join in my misery I say...
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Gather some half-baked systems requirements, which mean usually translate into something like
I want a system that does everything that all these systems do, but differently, cheaper, and more.
Then spend 15 minutes of quality design time, 2 hours of presentation creation time, 4 hours of review time, 4 hours of quality correction time.
Repeat process above for the entire systems life cycle, tollgates,etc, with every further iteration requiring less quality time, and more presentation and discussion time
Deliver system that does some of the stuff one of the previous systems did, looks pretty according to the newest trend, and angers half of the old users
Skills required:
Acting smart.
Talking like an expert.
Schmoozing.
and maybe some systems knowledge(not really, you can get the vendors to provide if you really can huckster them like a used car salesman)
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
A survey conducted recently by the National Geographic revealed that 74% lions think that wildlife isn't accurately depicted in nature movies. "C'mon, I spend most of the day sleeping or scratching myself and nature movies only show us dismembering zebras picturesquely! Confrontation with real life is disappointing for most of the cubs. We demand that at least 80% of air time be dedicated to sleeping and scratching." said an Anonymous Lion.
Would you rather have the masses read /. to form their stereo types of CS people?
"Computer science is clearly a field for people with enormous anuses, way too much time on their hands, hot grits down their pants, and a homosexual lust for cowboys."
Of course, this isn't too far off the mark from CMU.
Why bother.
Software developers are potrayed as accurately as: - The Naval Officers in Top Gun / Hunt for Red October / Crimson Tide. - Cops in Lethal Weapon n. etc, at least we have a fictional heroic archetype, which is more than most professions. Mark
I have never worked with a group more into drinking beer and lots of it. I think it would be an interesting study to see how many programmers are in fact alchoholics. Some use it to sleep to keep their minds off of code. besides.. coding with a hangover is awesome..
Are you sure about that one? This movie focuses on the executives, not the developers.
Are you sure you're not thinking of the movie 'Revolution OS'?
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
what was that movie? where he played a software company CEO named Linus. but the company is suspiciously portrayed as micro$oft weird huh?
d035 7hi5 100k 1ik3 4n l337 5i6 2 j00 ?
Like anything is accurately portrayed in the movies.
Car's don't blow up with a single gunshot and rarely in a crash and you can't throw away the laws of physics when having a fight or shooting weaponry.
They're movies, get over it. I doubt any doctors or lawyers find their roles portrayed particularly accurate either.
[)amien
I know this... this is UNIX!
IMHO and experience, the field is too broad, and its participants too diverse for any gross generalization to be helpful.
:)
That being said, their are definitely features with a higher probability of being found in software developers than in the population at large.
Instead of a movie which just should a simplistic "prototypical" developer, It would be better to have one which showed a sample of the different types of people found in the software developer community.
I invite any repliers to suggest candidate subclasses
Of course it is. Who among us is not familiar with the 349.586.456.893 IP addressing scheme, or using whois for username-to-terminal mapping?
Second, and this is something I noticed recently, ever notice how when you see "game developers!" on TV, they always show people modeling enemies and stuff. They never show people coding. It just doesn't make for good television. Carmack sitting at a million likes of DOOM III code isn't interesting (though in an id Software promo video I did see this for a few seconds). Someone making another bad guy is interesting.
I'd say that for the most part programmers/developers aren't portrayed at all - it's the people with eye candy jobs that are.
Schnapple
I've seen the various comments about Office Space being realistic as to its portrayal of programmers, but I beg to differ.
.
The movie was a comedy, perhaps not as over-the-top as "Dilbert," but a comedy nonetheless. The issues of stress and indignity were realistic, but as for the film itself . .
I don't think I've ever seen a truly accurate portrayal of a programmer's life, of my life, in mass media.
When a programmer character is trying to study up on a new technology, make time to have a life, try to find the guy to deal with the crashed server, and explain OOP/OOD to someone who doesn't get it, while maintaining an out-of-date system s/he didn't write, THEN you'll have something close to my life.
I haven't seen it yet. Though I note I may have missed something.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Am I the only person who thinks the phrase "software programmers" is awkward and redundant, and that just plain "programmers" sounds a lot better? What other kind of programmers are we likely to be talking about??
Anytime I see "software programmers" I think the person who wrote it doesn't have a clue about anything computer related.
Jim
It is all going to India. Tell them not to go into programming. It is going the way of factory work.
ACT I Scene 1:
Dave sits at PC reading slashdot. Michael enter's scene left
[MICHAEL]Morning Dave.
[DAVE]Mornin.
Michael sits, logs into computer, pulls up Slashdot
[MICHAEL]You see the Dave Barry interview?
[DAVE]Yeah. It's OK. Check out the Tom's Hardware 65 processor thingy. You catch Joe Millionare last night?
[MICHAEL]Nope, I was playing GTA3 for most of the night, and then I set up my new firewall. I did get the TCP/IP stack on my XBOX Linux build working though.
Dave and Michael sit working at computer for 3 hours, then get up and go into conference room for meeting. They sit in meeting for 2 hours, then get up and head back to their cubes.
[DAVE]You wanna catch some lunch?
[MICHAEL]Naw, I have some leftover do-nuts here, I'll just grab a coke and hang out here.
[DAVE]Cool, I gotta swing by Fry's and pick up a new IDE cable. See ya in a while.
[MICHAEL]Yep.
Michael read slashdot for 45 minutes when Dave returns. Michael and Dave work at their computers for 4 hours.
[MICHAEL]Quittin time. See ya tomorrow.
[DAVE]See ya.
Micheal walks out, save begins to put on jacket, scene fades.
ACT I Scene 2
repeat scene 1
...
Personally, I have never seen any movie work as I do. Been programming 15 years running, and of course I've changed my style but...
There is a time period in coding where one, sooner or later, has all the knowledge ready to spill out from their fingertips, and the screen(s) are setup for maximum coding output. It's in this time that I've been simply focused to the bone on some problem, wheel invented or not. This is a point of headphone blaring, slouching tapping and screen flipping that looks completely boring to an observer. In team jobs, it can be even more fun.
I don't think the movies would ever WANT to depict this strange ritual.
I think the tech ops guy on Alias is pretty realistic. In fact, they routinely show "real" computer screens such as:
* actual internet web pages in IE
* actual Unix command prompts
* actual C code
* actual pinging
there have been several times when I leaned over to my wife and said "See that! They showed real computer stuff!! That NEVER happens on TV!"
plus he's entirely wrapped up in his work, is socially challenged, and knows the source for Pong by memory!
He explores the fact that new entrants to Computer Science curriculum are typically clueless about what 'real' developers actually do.
That could be because the cs curriculums at most universities fail to actually teach what 'real' developers do.
Speaking as a Jedi, I have to say, the movie portrayals are quite unrealistic, but frankly, it's the only way to get new members.
I mean, for every trade negotiation that turns into an assassination attempt and daring escape from a battle fortress, there are thousands that are just plain boring; you sit around, listen to proposal and counter-proposal repeated verbatium for hours, until somebody changes something a whit, repeat, for a few weeks, then you break up for consultations.
For every five minutes you get to duel with a Sith Lord, you spend YEARS doing the sword-technique equivalent of sitting at a keyboard, typing 'jjj[space]fff[space]jjj[space]fff[space]'
Anywho, I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but the life of your typical Jedi is NOTHING like those flashy bastards you see in the movies.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
For the few minutes Neo is at work, we see a cube farm occupied by dressed up people silently working on their own, a person photocopying, phones ringing, a boss with his own office overseeing employee misconduct.
Another misconception of programmers propagated by the movies is that a programmer types continously for minutes on end. While that's sometime the case, a lot of time is spent reading code on the screen, jumping back and forth between peices of code, and working through design issues on paper or in one's head.
are just too fucking boring and fat to be portrayed as is. Who the fuck would pay $12 to see that?
Paula Schaeffer, on "24", portrayed by Sara Gilbert.
Trite, yet, but name someone else kept alive just to give the last bit of encrypted code.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
How about the guy in the new Toyota commercial. He even has a theme of his own. I know I have one. *hums to something like a tune*
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
It's been 30 minutes, and no one's mentioned "Pi"?
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
So a bunch of kids watch Hackers and think their future work life is going to be a bonanza of titties and mysterious plotting of evil archtypes?
Give me a break, if some yokels cant discern reality from F.A.N.T.A.S.Y. i say they get what they deserve (i thought i promised to me more optimistic today.. ah well).
They should tell ALL High School kids that life as a working adult is a soul-sucking destruction of humanity, regardless of what they do.
Maybe we should also warn them that their Married Lives wont be a rife with XXX-rated sex with the maid.
i'd say the three nerds from The X Files atleast looked and behaved the way a true geek does.
Hostes alienigieni me abduxerunt. Qui annus est?
Like many activites, writing Software is mostly boring work. Even "hacking" into systems is mostly number crunching, weeks of analyis, and waiting on scripts to determine vulnerable hosts.
Come on, in the real world people use dumb passwords, in the movie world they use dumb passwords that reveal some inner secret about the villian!
If you were to accurately portray Software Development or Hacking activities it wouldn't be interesting.
Maybe some aspects of Social Engineering would make for pretty good drama.
I saw a documentary recently, Revolution OS, pretty interesting potrayal of the folks involved in the Linux and Free Software community (to me this was interesting); but for most folks its not.
As far as entertainment goes, I would much rather see Hallie Barry on the big screen than Richard Stallman and I work in the Software Industry.
Movies tend to juice up many mundane jobs. Who thinks that real world spying is like 007? It you want to see real world -- watch the History Channel or Discovery.
Actually, mathematicians get in on the act as well. Take the case of the UCLA team that used the level-set method to resolve a blurry image and get a convinction in the Reginald Denny beating during the LA riots. For those unfamiliar with the story, click here and search for "Denny".
GMD
watch this
As just this morning I was getting my dick sucked while breaking into the DOD's mainframe. It took about 20 seconds.
SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
Though not *entirely* ficticious or up-to-date, "Pirates of the Silicon Valley" would be my next choice after Office Space.
I don't.
I enjoy getting paid more because people are a little scared and a little bit intimidated by us. Letting them peek behind the curtain isn't a healthy career move.
Bowie J. Poag
the programmers made some money in Office Space,
so that makes that movie a fantastic fantasy.
At least in Deskset with Tracy and Hepburn, the
lawyers seemed the most successful.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
Boy, you and your dad must be a couple of fucking losers. Remind me to watch a movie with you guys so that you will talk all throughout it and try to show how smart you guys are.
What a fucking life, you fatherfucker.
I'd be surprised to see any profession (other than waiter/waitress) accurately portrayed in a hollywood film. What kind of experience do you think writers have to draw on that they would have a clue what programmers really do?
Besides, movies that accurately portray jobs would be pretty boring. I'm sure that even George Bush's job isn't as exciting as most movies and TV shows make it look. Can you imagine people paying $7.50 to go see a movie that showed 2 hours of firefighters sitting around the station house playing cards, lifting weights, watching TV and reading pr0n?
The only time I expect a movie to come close to being 'real' is when they are recreating something that really happened. Pearl Harbor, Apollo 13, etc... These are movies where the writers send scripts to the real people. The real people then send notes back about what kind of morons the writers are and tell them what changes to make. Hopefully the movie comes out and hardly resembles what the writer imagined.
Ended up in a small, small place as the only coder with the boss from a galaxy far far away. They should really warn people about to enter the field about people and jobs like this.
I'd try to describe him to you, but it would take too long, I do keep a online journal of my adventures at NfoCipher.org
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
I've been a programmer for years and I still don't know what 'real' developers do!
That was pretty accurate.
...
What?
WHAT?! You never have to crack 128 bit synchronous encryption in 60 seconds by only guessing the pass-phrase while a dude has a gun to your head and a beautifu-bodatious but just as empty as a hot air baloon babe is giving you a blow-job?
Well that happened on interview.
You can't handle the truth.
secondary characters. When I worked at Three-Sixty Pacific, most of the programmers were replicas of either The Comic Book Guy or one of the college students that were Homer's roommates.
Office Space is a documentary of this subject!
Probably one of the closest (besides Office Space) is the kids in the van in Enemy of the State.
I know a certain few people that really do believe these movies and I think they did go into school to become programmers because of movies like Hackers.
It is laughable to think that anyone in their sane mind would believe that you could hack stop lights in 5 seconds especially on a Mac.
But alas, I do know people that bought these movies and watch them repetitively, and probably believe that real hacking is like that.
To me, I haven't seen Office Space, but the only realistic portrayal of programmers I know of is in Pirates of Silicon Valley.
What about Jeff Goldblum's character in Independence Day? Let's see... generally ignored and looked down upon, until everything gets fubar, THEN they turn to him, and he basically says: Yah, well, I knew that all along, but nobody was paying attention to me or bothered to ask. All you management are all alike. Oh, and then he makes that kick-ass virus that can be uploaded seamlessly into an alien computer system and displays a skull and crossbones as it does the dirty work.
Or perhaps Joe Morton's Miles Dyson from Terminator 2? Working with a team to reverse engineer a foreign piece of technology. Working long hours, forsaking his family for the project, always spending time on his computer. Also, completely ignoring the possible ramifications of his actions because the possible breakthroughs and creativeness are too tempting. Not to mention that he's observed the security measures at his place of employment and thought of ways to circumvent them.
Or how about Demon Seed? Ok, maybe that wasn't quite so accurate for 1977...
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
I thought the Dilbert is accurate.
Fight Spammers!
Okay, so it wasn't programming, but network recovery...
I was doing a disaster recovery on a peer to peer network once (everyone had access and full rights to everyone else...you do the math) and rather involved with recovering many important files, I neglected to notice the office secretary (who happened to be married at the time) get extremely "interested" in what I was doing.
I noticed what the hell was going on when she started giving me head while I was restoring these files.
Anyway, it was fun to see this portrayed in the movies at "Swordfish"...I was the only one laughing out loud at that scene...
In any case, the job sucked, that was bad. The secretary sucked, but that was good. "Swordfish" just plain sucked. The TVR was completely fouled up. TVRs are NOT metal, I know, I own one.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
the screen always reflects nicely off the coating of their glasses lenses. That's the important part of hacking a computer, making sure your glasses are clean and polished.
KFG
If they ever did make a true to life movie about computer programmers, it would be BORING! The Net, Wargames, The Matrix and several others put a spin on it because lets face it, staring at a computer screen for hours on end only interests people who are programmers (well, and those who are addicted to games, irc, instant messaging and the web in general.). The life of a programmer pretty much goes like this:
1. Sleep
2. Wake up
3. Coffee and Food
4. Shower (maybe)
5. Drive to work.
6. Code for 7 hours or more.
7. Some point there's a meeting.
8. Drive home.
9. Eat or go out.
10. Code or go see latest Sci Fi Flick.
11. Code some mroe
12. Sleep.
Pretty boring.
Gorkman
I thought that Mr. Potato Head from War Games was and still is an accurate portrayal of software developers...
Look, LOTR:TT diverged from the book (a lot), a Beautiful Mind diverged from history (a lot)... why shouldn't movies about engineers (or cops or porn stars or garbage men) diverge from reality too?
Look, I hate it (a lot) but it's a losing battle. Reality is actually quite dull and those who make movies don't think you'll want to watch it.
You mean software developers can't dodge bullets, leap hundreds of feet, download centuries worth of martial arts expertise into their brains, and bend spoons with their minds? I feel cheated...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Worst is talking to developers that think they are re-living the roles from such movies and think that the world is hanging from a thread if they decide to complete a piece of code or not...
.. given that it was based on actual history. Have a look at http://alt.tnt.tv/movies/tntoriginals/pirates/.
We hackers all live in attic apartment, writing supposed malicious programs for raving revolutionary friends, only to arrive late to work, have a phone delivered, bug implanted, and so on. We all also travel through full-duplex phone lines, and walk into large goverment agencies armed to the teeth with fully automatic weapons. Then we all transcend the binary language, and become digitally enhanced! Yay! Yay for hackers!
Informatus Technologicus
I spend a lot of my day sitting around reading and posting to slashdot. No really. I am very quick with my alt+tab when my boss walks by.
Am I the only guy who gets pissed when mission critical systems are portrayed in movies as over-the-top guis that take for ever to do something .. and that the complete lack of sane interface design is used to build tension?
They don't put those guis there to build tension- it's really because they've been pressured by crappy software companies (read: Microsoft) to get people to believe that your software is "hi-tech" if it has a cumbersome interface that runs like cold molasses.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Maybe we just don't want to watch ourselves.on TV. You think?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Who remembers this one?
So true! Although the good (open-source) vs evil (Micro$oft-activities) plot line is a bit too "Richard Stallman" for my tastes, it still is a great movie.
Although the irony is that for being a Microsoft-ique company they use GNOME + some flavor of UNIX on thier desktops (even on the daycare machines).
Garth's Girlfriend in Waynes world 2.
"Is that a unix manual?"
"yeah."
They catch you, and they put a bug in your guts so they can track you down to hunt a famous computer terrorist. And then you decide to take a pill... and all hell goes lose. You wake up shaven naked and weak, looking like a hedgehog with all the needles coming out of your body. Then they stick a jack in your ass (I mean head) and they teach you kung-fu shit, and you fight with Fishburn. And then they send you back and you fight agent Smith. And then a girl kisses you and you wake up.
You can't handle the truth.
Well, lets not just talk about movies.. What about TV ? CSI:xxxxx ? they have 'computer people/techs' do all that investigation, and Law and Order ?
In sure there are more than this.. i dont watch that much TV.
Or what about that one car commercial, with the western music, and the guy taking his kids to the park, they even mention 'software developer'.
The movies tend to entertain, but it seems tv ( where most of these kids would be watching for more reality.. ) is starting to introduce technology in more real ways.
definately could be out of David Lynch's Eraserhead.... does that help?
...or techie office drones in general is still pretty well done by Scott Adams' Dilbert cartoon.
I know Dilbert has lost its buzz a bit but I still can relate to a lot of the scenarios.
Today's flex-time definition was on the money...
PI, no there is a great movie, and his apartment looks so much like mine.
I'll tell you why 'computer guys' should care about this...
Poorly stereotyping the people who practice a particular profession or hobby typically makes those peoples' lives worse.
If Hollywood reinforces the myth that 'computer guys' can't get dates or 'computer guys' have poor personal hygiene or 'computer guys' think about committing cyber crimes a lot, then people may begin to believe it. This affects social lives, workplace attitudes, etc.
I'm a computer engineer student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. There are a number of computer science students here who honestly have no clue whatsoever how to use a computer. Just the other day a CS student asked me to help him with his computer -- the screen was shaking back and forth. Well, he had an AC cord wrapped around his VGA cord. He had no clue what AC was, nor what frequency the US was on when I asked.
I think the computer engineers know a little more (in my biased opinion) because most people don't think of it as a major when they think of computers. Computer science is the first thing that comes to mind. Many guys say "Well, I like playing video games, and making them sounds like fun, so I'll major in that" even though they themselves have no programming experience whatsoever. It pains me when I have to fix their computers.
Don't get me wrong. There are a great many students here who know an extensive amount, whether it be software or hardware, and have done some very interesting things with it. But you can always tell those people who simply think that learning about computers will make them rich.
Natural born killers.
Oh, wait...
You can't handle the truth.
I am sure the death(s) of the Lone Gunmen of the X Files (RIP) was a special moment of TV history for more than a few /. fans. Possibly inspired more people with their moral commitment than their technical savy. Not a reality, of course, but I can't help but think what the world would be like if there were large numbers of people like them.
but without the sexual danger.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
And virtually every modern Bond film includes an impossible or close-to-impossible helicopter stunt.
Pfft. Next you'll try to tell us that Air Wolf was fake too. Shesh..
Nuff Said
Revenge Of The Nerds!
The ubergeek Marshall is about as accurate as I've seen, albeit he work(s|ed) for a super-secret organization with a huge R&D budget
These movies PRECISELY describe what I do all day. Why, right this minute, I'm typing on one of my 8 totally custom made keyboards suspended in the air around me by a complex system of racks and harnesses, while glancing from side to side at the 21 monitors hanging around my control chair (with power swivel), and protecting my neon-lit plexiglass-cased server from being attacked by rogue agents and crackers going after the kernel! I'm regularly stopped by agents in expensive suits and 400 dollar Ray-Bans on the street and threatened about my attempts to bring down the national infrastructure with my super password cracking program that, if released, would allow instant access to every system on the planet. And don't even get me started with my super intense VR room in the back that let's me have hyper-realistic "intimate encounters" with my computer-generated love slave(s).
I think we need to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding our profession and let the world know that we absolutely have the best fucking jobs on the planet.
-Oakbox
Not just answers, the correct questions.
While I agree that Hollywood sensationalizes software engineers, I would look more closely at the people who actually work in the industry. I think you'll find more hackers than engineers. I wasn't convinced the head of the software department (for the semiconductor company I use to work for) knew how to turn a computer on.
You've dated at least one hot waitress? Assuming you've got at least a modicum of social skills and a programmer's salary, picking up a hot girl in the food service career path should be cake.
paintball
Dude, stop trying to hose things up. If hollywood likes to portray us as cool, suave, mysterious techno-elite with exciting and interesting jobs, which occasionally require a bit of intrigue, and always involve a whizz-bang 3D VR GUI, what's not to like? It's much better than the truth, and worlds better than the hollywood geek stereotype of yesteryear (think "Revenge of the Nerds"). The geek populance needs all the help they can get with the chicks. And we also need all the help we can get attracting the top talent of tomorrow. Trying to "correct" someone who thinks you are cool is idiocy. And we are cooler than we think, anyway.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
The answer is, in all those cases: it'd make a better dang movie.
The stupid lowest-common-denominator version of computer hacking in movies is about on the level of Doogie Howser's computer diary at the end of each episode. How often do the HUGE letters c-r-a-w-l across the monitor as our hero manually types in the oh-so-secret password? That's not only unrealistic, it's just plain bad moviemaking.
It's a cliche: good dramatic writing is specific, it doesn't live in the world of generalities, and it sure doesn't live in the world of crappily-written generalities. The best legal thrillers have some clue: the defense gets the final closing argument, not the other way around because you thought it would play better. A good thriller would take some time to give us plausible details about whatever computer details it needs: because we're not freaking idiots, and they don't need to dumb it down completely to let us understand. These movies would be better if they made the effort to get it right, just like a horse racing movie would be better with some convincing details about horse racing. Duh.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
for the most part, by putting simple charecters in complicated *times.* These are often the best and most compelling stories.
Gone With the Wind was a story like this. They certainly don't come much simpler than that whiney little Scarlett bitch. If she were *your* neighbor you'd probably like nothing more than to slap the hell out of her. But place that simple person in the path of the War of Northern Agression and you get a story.
I don't see any reason why this couldn't be done well with programers.
KFG
I know its a documentary, but I'm surprised its not received any mention yet.
Of course movies aren't realistic. In movies, the hacker gets the girl!
If you want to attract more people to Software Engineering then let Hollywood continue to portray engineers just as they do. In fact, make the characters even more outlandish and romanticized. Since the true reality of software engineering isn't all that exciting or glamorous, let's just lie about it. Isn't that how the military used to try and get people in to enlist? Sure you're going to be shot at and you could well die, but do it for your country! You can be a war hero and a respected veteran and you'll be set for the rest of your life. Think of all the fabulous adventures you'll have! Come join us!
A> Documentation
B> Wait for your team members to complete work that you need in order to start your work
C> Wait more
All of the female programmers I work with look like Angeline Jolie. We all run around the city for a few hours and then order pizza while the uber-programmer sits and types at a keyboard while equations float in the air around his head.
I also score with the Angeline-clones every day. We just knock the keyboard and mouse of the desk and do naughty things after work.
Sigh - back to work. I have to use a pay phone to save the world.
Contact was surprisingly decent. The terminals in their lab ran X of some sort and one guy had a badge (political style) stuck to his monitor that said, "I'm a member of the UNIX party," and it was all red, white and blue. Classy.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
How about Terrance Mann in Field of Dreams?
Everyone forgets about that one. Although the focus was primarily on the charecter as a writer, he was *was* a full time writer of educational computer games.
I thought it was done rather well.
KFG
I have yet to see a movie that accurately portrayed programmers. Most of us are human, generally don't sit down to a keyboard and immediately (and very rapidly) hack up a masterpiece of code or fall asleep at the keyboard after an all night hacking binge. Most of us who are married also have a life outside computers (ie. wife, kids, house, etc etc etc). On the one hand, it's nice to see it viewed as "cool" and "glamorous", but on the other hand, get real....most insulting are the tech school ads on tv....Hi my name is so and so and I'm in charge of DSL installation....big whoop!
He just has 'ls' aliased to '/usr/local/evil_script'. :)
Michael Loves Me!
'Cept if you'll remember NURV is specifically mentioned as not being M$. When the main character first goes to Tim Robbins house, he asks if the electronic wall art is like the system Bill Gates has. Robbins replies, "Bill Gates' is primitive." So while the GNOME+*NIX desktop would be unlikely for a company with NURV's er... philisophical bent, it's not out of the question.
Come to think of it given Robbins' speech on open source to Ryan Phillipe at the beginning of the movie (the one about others taking Phillipe's work and getting rich off of it) it would seem likely that they would use a BSD variant that they could customize and close.
I always thought the the computer guy DeNiro hired in The Score was a pretty accurate portrayal. I especially like the basement geek lair. As to how this could entice anybody into CS is anybody's guess.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
Two people are on a date having dinner:
I can't remember where I saw that, but man, can't they take five minutes and find someone to construct a meaningful sentence? Where are my share of the honies?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Are lawyers also accurately shown in movies?
Are soldiers? Corporate executives?
Come on. It's a movie. If people form their
opinions of professions based on what they
see in movies, then likely they are too
foolish to take up a profession in the first
place.
Although I'm not quite the Quidditch player I once was, we do have our share of wizard duels now and again. As an Open Source proponent I would have to say Bravehart would match my experiences, especially the intestine ripping part if not the kilt and sword play.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Could there be anything more silly than worrying about the movie representation of a software developer?
Actually, the article is about the recent phenomenon of people believing these fallacious movie portrayals and choosing their career paths as such. Probably why we have so many mental-midget MCSEs as we do:
1. See movie with kewl programmers
2. Decide to go into programming
3. CS is too hard and it's not cool like in the movies
4. Get MCSE instead
5. ?????
6. Profit!
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
The ethnic composition of developers was inaccurate. If you work in software development, look around you. You will usually find a lot of immigrants (not just one from Arabia(???) as in Office Space) and a few token white guys.
But, of course, Office Space is the closest hollywood has even gotten to portraying developers accurately.
All your favorite sites in one place!
And this is why the state of commercial software these days is as sorry as it is.
Just make it work and screw the details. Great.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
...she's not even all that good looking anymore, especially in that TV show she's still on. Saggy, pouter face, miserable with life, blah..... the see-through-ish shirts aren't helping anymore :)
AntiTrust for me was like hackers done right. They didn't dumb down anything for the viewer. They even explained what an IP Address was. The credits were in HTML tags. The main programmer dude had Warcraft and Starcraft action figures on his desk (just like me. =] ) It was probably the most real major release computer nerd movie. The only part I didn't like is that the program they were working on was like an over-glorified Napster clone in which the Microsoft wannabes wanted to steal from the main guy. Swordfish wasn't really true to life. But there was this one scene where he's sitting infront of his 10 computer screens programming his ass off. He's all happy and coding like crazy, doing everything right. I turn to my friend sitting next to me in the theater and ask "Where the hell is the cussing and screaming?" And sure enough, five seconds later something doesn't work right. He goes into a fit of rage, yelling and screaming at the computer just as if it was the computer's fault. Just like any real programmer. =)
Has there ever been any movie that accurately portrayed any profession?
Films portray the lives of IT personel as accurately as they portray the lives of cops, spies, and soldiers. After 20 years writing software, I know very few techno geeks with $200,000 worth of hardware in their living room, infinite broadband, email/chat clients that "type" out messages at 110 baud, and the ability to crack secure government sites in 15 seconds.
I laughed my ass off watching Sanda Bullock pretend to be a geek in "The Net". I also laughed my ass off watching "Office Space", then I cried because it too accuately described my life - right down to smashing a fax machine from hell with 25 pounds worth of Microsoft developer documentation.
Although not a movie, Dilbert is the most accurate representation of the programmer/engineer, and the crap he encounters day in and day out.
The most realistic portrayal of "techie" types I've ever seen is "Nick Burn's -- Your Company's Computer Guy!"
Or maybe the fat guy in Jurrasic Park...
What happened to Career Day in school?
When I was in High School (mid 80s), every two years the school arranged a "career week" where different companies/people came in and gave talks, demonstrations, and answered questions about what it is they did for work.
They gave out descriptions of jobs entailed, the official job descriptions and answered all sorts of questions. They were actually pretty honest and not just "rah! rah! We are the greatest to work for!"
Anybody who believes Hollywood's portrayal of ANYTHING without doing their own homework deserves what they get.
I'm more worried about my kids getting their HISTORY from Hollywood (i.e. - Pearl Harbor) than their job descriptions.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
These werent your usual software types. Just young naive greedy guys. No way theyd make a business.
They made him look too goofy; but, he was a *real* engineer, and so were his fellows. Considering that this movie is historically based, it stands to reason that the real engineers were something like this.
The anti-realistic engineer: Wayne Knight in Jurassic Park! He's about as realistic as the average portrayal Realtors in movies -- possibly the only profession that might be even more skewed...
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
First show em office space.... make sure they get the memo.
After the movie finishes tell them its got a large essence of truth.... turn the lights on, the ones that are left you can start teaching how to code.
Don't spend a whole freaking semseter on the tools, whiles, ifs etc... frankly if it takes them 3+ months to grasp the basics of a language they are FUBAR and should run screaming from the field before they get ensared in it. Don't be a syntax Nazi, computers no longer require punch cards and carefull scheduling to test a program.
Introduce them to real world application problems ASAP, open source is a perfect educational opportunity just waiting to be made use of. Whether they officially add to the source code of the project, develop in tandem or produce a fork makes no matter so long as they are dealing with something real. Granted wading into an open source project is not for the newbie forsh with no idea how to write a line of code but by the time they reach junior/senoir status they are theoretically supposed to be nearing the point in time where they can contribute meaningful code to a real world project. In reality that is something that in most CS programs is the exception, not the rule.
finally TIMTOWTDI !! god how I hated teachers that thought there was only one solution.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
DOH! I forgot to use HTML tags. :)
Link.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Anywho, I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but the life of your typical Jedi is NOTHING like those flashy bastards you see in the movies.
Stop bitching and join the Sith already.
I think the SNL sketch "Nick Burns the Computer Guy" is an accurate portrayal of most UNIX users I know.
My personal favorite is when movie people type in commands like these:
ERASE ALL TOP SECRET FILES
Seriously, when was the last time you deleted anything like that?
You might like this site. We hang out there and nitpick stuff like movies, Star Trek, etc...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Written in Java, connecting to satellites via tcp/ip?????
The Hollywood portrayal could be worse, you know. Just imagine if they portrayed debugging like a ST:TNG episode, complete with flashing red alert lights and lots of noises:
Picard: What's our status?
Data: The process is attempting to completely allocate all available memory and CPU cycles.
Worf: Available memory is down to 50%. 40%...
Picard: Suggestions?
Riker: Perform a break. Try to find out what happened.
Picard: Make it so.
Data: Ctrl-C was not successful. Process is still consuming resources.
Worf: 30%, 20%...
Wesley: Captain, this may be due to an incorrect check in the while loop...
Picard: Shut up, Wesley!
Geordi: Captain, we're losing segmentation containment. We've got to dump the core!
Worf: ...10%...
Picard: All hands, this is the Captain! All hands, log out! Repeat, all hands log out!
Kaboom! Blue screen of death.
GMD
watch this
If Hollywood reinforces the myth that 'computer guys' can't get dates or 'computer guys' have poor personal hygiene...But, computer guys are the ones re-infocring those myths.
Oh Boy. Most programmers that I work with, including myself, consider themselves "Normal." We aren't uber geeky.
As far as binary trees go, well that is pretty basic stuff dude. Linked lists too. Its called data structures. They are important to know.
Learn wherever you want. If you learn better in a structured environment (shcool), then go for it. If you learn better on you own, more power to you. But keep learning. Don't shrug off this stuff as uber geek nonsense.
I have to say, I would probably not hire you. I don't like hiring hacks. I like programmers with discipline. I like to hire people who "Get it," and by your comments, it is clear that you do not. But perhaps someday young padowan (sp?) you too will become a master.
Of course, it's a documentary about real people.
Depends on which part of Indiana Jones -- and what part of alchaeology -- you're talking about.
I took an arkeo class from a prof who worked primarily in South America, and he had the hat, the boots, the smoking, the scruffy beard, and stories about getting shot at by grave robbers while trying to excavate.
So the first 15 minutes of Raiders were pretty accurate.
They try way toooo hard to be "different" and think that shooting nerf guns in the office makes them "cool."
Let me guess -- you're in the Accounting deparment and are jealous that you're not allowed to play with the Development toys. Or wait, wait, you're tired of sneaking away at 5 o'clock and getting your ass handed to you by a 19-year-old who put straight pins in his Nerf bullets for that extra kick.
Go crawl back to your windowless office and figure out why we just had our weekly pizza and game night cancelled due to "budget constraints". And yes, I am the one that camped your ass in UT2K3 last week.
I can't believe that nobody has mentioned Office Space. I am quite sure that if you think about it, Office Space is the answer.
www.jmagar.com
-
Have you ever been to Tahiti?
And, more importantly, did you bring your stapler with you?
Though not a happy story Startup.com is very accurate. Its a documentary about real guys. It follows them through the rise and fall of dot.coms. http://us.imdb.com/Title?0256408
Are we as a people ever going to grow up to the point where we can watch a movie and know it's fantasy? If people are stupid enough to enroll into a career based on a bunch of 2D moving pictures, then they deserve to fail.
Jesus Saves! And takes half damage (shouldn't the Son of God have improved evasion?)
Right.
In fact I rememeber back to when my sister wanted to become a prostitue after watching Pretty Woman. Boy o' boy, it's a good thing my mom sat her down and had a talk with her about how movies are all make believe. Heh.. silly girl, she thought they were real...
If you've seen Tom Hank's job in Joe Versus The Volcano, that pretty much sums up the working conditions for the average corporate software developer. At least in my personal experience as a corporate server operations guy!
I'm thankful I dropped out of CS/college now! I get 90% of the salary, and 0% of the student loans!
PS - for those who missed the movie, a boring desk job under flickering fluorescent lights for hours on end. Just give Tom some O'Reilly books on his desk, and that's it!
Zero Cool is the most accurate depiction of a coder I have ever seen. Hack the Planet!
"Because caffine helps us program."
This says it all.
For a few seconds in the matrix, where the boss calls neo into his office and tells him to conform or he's out, now that is reality!
:)
The rest, well, who knows?
type as fast as ANY of thsoe hackers in the movies. they routinely hit @ 300 wpm.
And no mistakes either.
Demon Seed was a far better movie about real programmers.
If you caught Dinner for Five (the Daredevil actor special with Kevin Smith, Colin Farrell, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner. Hosted by Jon Favreau) you would have seen what movie insiders think of programming.
Favreau asked Colin about the orchestral computer in Minority Report (remember Farrell was in that too). Favreau then compared the sweeping arm motions to the "You know. They just sit there all day silently like this [makes keyboarding motions with hands]"
Colin replied that they had figured out a precise sign language (that doing [this] with your hands meant "stop", etc) so there was an underlying syntax... but it wasn't as dry as toast as normal keyboarding.
I have to agree. Watching someone else key is like watching someone else play golf... touch of death!
What is music when you despise all sound?
They're all pretty far off the mark with the exception of 2 that I've seen. Office Space is pretty accurate as far as the office life of a programmer goes. Antitrust,
while not giving a very good picture of the average programmers office environment, is the most accurate movie ever as far as the technology in the movie. It looked to me as if they had real linux boxes set up. The snippets of code they showed looked accurate as well. I was impressed.
Now, if we could just combine the two and have Office Antitrust we'd really have something. Hmm for some reason Microsoft comes to mind with that statement....
Not quite a movie, but a great reality show....
Stick Theo DeRaadt, DJ Bernstein, Richard Stallman, and Wietse Venema (gotta stick someone nice in there) on a desert island somewhere and film whatever takes place.
When I see a guy with glass looking over UML and flow charts as he as his Visual C++ programm open then they will have got it right.
"Ironically, as a college professor, I have the opportunity to meet a large number of employers of software developers. Invariably they are looking for graduates who socialize well in groups, are team players, are articulate, and are able to give coherent oral presentations. Although they obviously expect some technical ability, overwhelmingly the traits that most distinguish new graduates are communication abilities and the willingness to be a team contributor. This is exactly the opposite of movies' portrayal of software developers."
This is EXACTLY why I changed my major from Comp Sci (read: boring) to Communication with a focus on Digital Media. It has many of the Comp Sci technical aspects, but teaches all the communication parts you need to actually survive in the Real World(tm). This is my last semester and it has been a very valuable program. Something for the freshman to consider...
-Valiss
Michael Bolton. Yes, that's right. The bad-ass, perpetually angry programmer from the classic "Office Space" is the prototype of what a software developer should be portrayed as in a movie. And since his brilliant scheme is thwarted by a bug, all the better!
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
And for some reason, the cowboys were always pains. It's like Instant Asshole; just add a Stetson and a bigass belt buckle. Why do you need a huge pickup truck, you live in an apartment? Are you going to round up stray dogs or something?
The women were great.
"What does your husband do?"
"Well, mostly he drinks and collects disability for it".
Good answer. You can't ask for a better job. "Can I have the afternoon off? There's a storm coming and we need to tie the house down". Or "I was too stupid to work a loom so I became a mainframe programmer". I worked with all kinds.
And don't get me started on operators. I came in one night and the 3rd shift operator told me all about how easy it was to kill people. "I could kill every wino in town and no one would know. I work here after midnight and they sleep just outside the emergency exit. I could kill one a night and they would never be missed. Does anyone know that you are here?". This was different from the 2nd shift operator who hid the TV set because the FBI could watch him through it.
Boring? Never. Funny? Yes. Marketable. No way.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
You're talking about:
secret = code_word == bush;
Learn some C operators. Learn their order of precedence. You'll feel right as rain.
For a pretty accurate representation, except for the actual jobs they are doing and the hijinx they get into, I would have to go with ... Half Baked.
At least around here, most of those in software are pretty much sandal wearin' potheads. Makes for a laid back work environment.
I thought the business of solving other peoples mistakes was pretty accurate.
After all, his thesis seems to be that, were it not for those portrayals of misfit geniuses, CS programs would attract fewer "brilliant, socially awkward young people who code on the fly, think they can singlehandedly develop ultracomplex systems, and are interested in breaking into computers" and more people "who socialize well in groups, are team players, are articulate, and are able to give coherent oral presentations."
Some of you may remember the programs that attract those people: business and BCIS. Others may also remember CS classes like VAX assembler and discrete math, courses that are far more likely to scare off those who aren't introverted misfits. (Hell, I've got a thousand-page algorithms text sitting on my bookshelf that by itself scares me!)
This isn't to say that those courses aren't profitable for computer scientists -- but the discipline, like mathematics or certain hard sciences, does tend to attract and maintain a particular kind of person.
In any case, if Dr. Harrison is perturbed by the media's portrayal of programmers, imagine how lawyers feel! Try an episode of Perry Mason in a real court:
And don't get me started on The Agency. God alone knows how many disguntled wannabe James Bonds are trapped as GS-10s in the Community...."Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
.. there's more to being an engineer then just writing technical memos that nobody reads. Sometimes someone reads one and then you have to find a scapegoat or take some vacation time and hope the whole thing blows over.
Read the Scientists, Engineers and other odd people chapter in The Dilbert Principle. That chapter is a pretty good portrayal.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
There are dozens of routes a person can take with their CS background, even within the field of professional programming. Yes, unfortunately, Office Space and Dilbert are a fairly realistic portrayal of the majority of the corporate / clueless-business world. But this is by no means the only option! To those geeks among us who dread the idea of turning into a Dilbert or Peter Gibbons, let me share two words of advice: small business. Start your own, team up with your like-minded buddies, or find someone to help you with the business-end. Or maybe you can find an existing small firm with a wholesome company attitude and a product/service you'd feel proud to be a part of. Jobs should not be pure drudgery and the bane of your existance.
Are you saying that a movie like The Two Towers can't be good because doesn't portray anything in the real world accurately?
Fiction has at least some component of fantasy in it. It isn't up to you to determine how much there should be.
There can be good realistic movies and good unrealistic movies. Neither is automatically better than the other.
I personally reject the current feeling in Hollywood that more real is more gritty and automatically better. "The Manchurian Candidate" wouldn't have been a better movie if it portrayed hypnosis and brandwashing more accurately.
The major complaint of characters in film is that they are stereotypical or iconic. To an extent, his is necessary from a storytelling perspective. Once the icon has been established, the characters should be fleshed out and made more interesting.
The problem with this question is that is flawed in the exact same way that the criticized portrayals are flawed. You are basically saying that all software programmers are one particular type and that type has not been accurately portrayed.
All software programmers are different. Some are reclusive, unsanitary, pizza-eating geeks and some are not!
Please remember that there are many reclusive, unsanitary, pizza-eating geeks that couldn't write a line of code to save their lives.
(sig on loan to Smithsonian)
And on a related note has anyone else noticed that when a love scene comes up, you almost always hear the saxophone blaring away....they might as well start calling it the SEXophone now
---
The movie Pi seems the best representation of how we work at my company....at least the workspace organization.
...I believe that you can out drive an exploding volcano, stop a lava flow with a few k-rails & some water, blow up an asteroid with a space shuttle and a nuclear engine, find a girl on accident one afternoon, run to her wedding and have her drop her fiancee that she's invested time & money into on a 'feeling', and that when someone gets murdered the police sirens come on within seconds of it happening.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
That's a hero programmer movie. Dr. Forbin saves the world, working out of the Colossus Programming Office.
I've personally dubbed it the 'Carmack Effect' (Sorry John, but the fishbowl you guys live in at id is the best example), where people have a very incorrect impression that we sit around all day playing games, then go out to dinner in our Ferraris and Hummers. Those who are programmers, etc., or understand the job... They know that we don't play games all day, but still see it as as a far 'cooler' job than 'ordinary' software development for the most part. I think that may stem from the fact that a generation of computer industry people played around with games on TRS-80's, Apples and C64's, typing in listings and programming their own in BASIC... Somewhere in there is a bunch of unrealized dreams and dissatisfaction with what it takes to pay the bills some days.
Being a game programmer myself, I've noticed it a lot over the years to the point where I automatically play down what I do and have a canned spiel I tell people to keep them from getting wild ideas about my job.
Being an unusually successful game programmer (I wrote a good chunk of the 4th best selling PC game of the last 10 years among others) makes me only that much more uncomfortable at times as I know that most programmers who go into the game industry will not get to enjoy some of the rewards I have. It's not fair or equal, but then no one said it would be.
-Mp
Sounds like that about fits the bill to me.
Jesus, why are some developers so delusional that they envision themselves as these important cool people that the rest of the world finds so interesting.
This one's easy, it's because they're PROUD. Yup, they're sinners alright.
Anyway, my dad says they're sinning against the 10TH COMMANDMENT. Are *YOU* sinning against the 10th commandment? Here's a checklist:
Have I envied others? either their lives or their goods?
Have I desired anything that was another's?
Have I damaged or destroyed the possessions or property of others?
Have I desired things God has not given me?
Have I been discontent with my life?
Have I held back anything due to another because I wanted it myself or for any other reason?
Have I hoped for the downfall of another so that I might gain by it?
Have I failed to be gracious and generous to anyone?
Have I wanted from God what I refused to give to a fellow man: forgiveness? goods? grace? physical or spiritual blessings?
Have I been greedy?
Have I been jealous of another person's goods, money, appearance, success, love, popularity, being loved by another or others?
Have a violated copyright by illegally downloading music, films or software?
Have I concentrated my time, efforts and thoughts on the things of the world rather than on the things of the spirit?
+++ They all asked, "Are you then the Son of God?" He (Jesus) replied, "You are right in saying I am." (Luke 22:70)
Guy: Well, it would be a lot easier if you could tell me whose system you want to hack into.
Ryan: [looks around] [mouths] Ritter.
Guy: [goofy look] [mouths] Ritter?
Ryan [nods] [walks away]
Guy: ...wow. Well, we're way beyond birthdays now. I'm going to have to write a... very... special... program for this. [starts typing a mix of COBOL, BASIC, and other nonsense]
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
man, have all of you guys been coding too long today? definately the most accurate portrayal of programmers! havent we all found out the world we live in is a lie and we're all really just little power plants being used by the machines that took over the earth?
I thought Apollo 13 had an air of truth about it, about engineers in general. Less smoking happens these days and fewer ties are worn, of course, but the geeks seemed geeky in the correct manner.
I particularly enjoyed the sole actual software guy, the MIT hack who got rousted out of bed. Seen the Apollo LM DSKY simulator, by the way?
The boy asks, "Doesn't Bill Gates have something like that?"
To which the CEO replies, "Bill who...?," before snickering and going on with "Nooo! The one Bill Gates has is primitive!"
Anyway, when I saw this story, Anti-Trust was the first movie that came to mind. I really liked the way that they portrayed the programmers, and the best thing about it is that my little brother who knows nothing about programming actually liked it and showed it to his equally clueless friends who ended up liking it too. ^_^
Clearly the field of computer science is not what it is in the movies, but does that really matter? I don't think that I would want share the field with people who could be deterred so easily by the image portrayed in films.
Have most students entering college today seen War Games or TRON? Even most of my friends who graduated a few years ago, and who grew up when these movies were released in the theatres haven't seen them. Okay, maybe a few of them have seen War Games, but most of them haven't seen TRON.
And if today's students have seen these movies why should I believe that those students view them as accurate portrayals of anything. I'm especially thinking of TRON. Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie, but the visual effects in TRON seem only slightly better than some of the effects in sci-fi movies from the '50s, at least compared to what is coming out of Holywood today.
I think what this comes down to is a new twist to the old argument of popular media ruining the world. Think back to how many times video games, music, television, and movies have been blamed for corrupting the youth. Now how is this argument any different? Rather than blame the media (who will continue to misrepresent everyone, not just programmers) why don't we actually get out into the world and let students know what we really do. Maybe even invite students to shadow us at work for a day.
...that the movie Golden Eye represents programmers accurately. I mean after all, doesn't everyone know a hot female Russian programmer? Revolution OS might be the most accurate portrayal.
----- "It's all fun and games 'til somebody puts an eye out, then it's just funny."
being the same as the speed of light...
While I would appreciate an "accurate" portrayal in a real life story or drama about a coder, when it comes to science fiction, I've just given up. If ya can't beat 'em, etc.
Plus, we're a diverse lot. What would count as "realistic"?
Software runs, well, everything. Ergo, it's difficult to represent members of the programming proffession with any overall accuracy. Granted, Office Space was a great attempt, and remains my favorite movie ever. Even the Great Office space defines the environment at a Corporation whith an "cog in the wheel" Mentality.
There are a lot of small software firms, or even individual developers who lead lives very different from our friend Peter. I work for one such small software firm as one of two programmers. About 40% of what I do in a given day is programming. Much of it is tech support for other employees, fixing servers, talking to customers, developing marketing material, doing web design etc. As a general rule, the smaller company the more hats you have to wear, and I wouldnt have it any other way.
As it turns out, I do "code by the seat of my pants" most of the time thanks to undefined, yet inflexible deadlines which are often dictated not by an array of bosses, but business parters, customers, and generally anyone who knows about our company and has a valid opinion.
From the article: "I have the opportunity to meet a large number of employers of software developers. Invariably they are looking for graduates who socialize well in groups, are team players, are articulate, and are able to give coherent oral presentations." Uh huh. And why are they looking for those traits? Answer: Because they are rare among programmers. And for good reason. Programming is for people who like to program; people who understand formal logic, who are comfortable with a machine that does exactly what you ask though rarely what you want. People like this rarely socialize well in groups (except in groups of similar people) because they simply don't think the same way. They don't give good oral presentations for the same reason. Articulate? Many are articulate -- it's just those claiming they are otherwise don't understand them, not when they are "talking shop". There are vanishingly few people who can both code well and speak well about their code to non-programmers. These people will not be out there searching for jobs; you'll be bidding for them, if you want one. There are many more who can speak in ordinary language and understand programmers -- however, these are not programmers but good technical writers. A good programmer can understand ordinary language, but asking for presentations is a bit much; programmers regard this as a waste of time, and it will be -- it'll piss the programmers off, and the targets won't understand them. Asking your programmers to talk directly to the customers... unless you're marketing to other developers, I hope you didn't need that customer.
Great pilot, but never picked up by the networks. Produced by Ben Stiller, it involves Jack Black as an Astronaut who "flew too close to the sun" and became super intelligent. Now NASA wants him dead or alive. He goes around solving crime with his talking motorcycle Heat Vision (who's voice is Owen Wilson). If you haven't seen this pilot, get it off Kazaa. Hilarious! There were some rumors that it was going to be turned into a movie...here's the link Heat Vision & Jack
...and another thing:
Until I see some horror movie where a programmer has to sacrifice a Black Goat to his SCSI chain, they aren't portraying anything realistically enough. And yes, I know that's not really software programming, but sometimes software engineers have to deal with the infernal machine they are coding on.
Hey, let's drop a nice little virus written on a mac into the alien mothership and watch the whole FLEET come tumbling down! Hey, macs can do just about everything else. why not?
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
But somehow microsoft has implemented this feature in Windows 2000, so that removing a hundred byte file can actually take that long!
To begin with, its hard to portray a heroic engineer. To show an engineer's abilities, you have to teach the audience his work, to show a really cool coder, remove the hot chick from beside his desk, the sixpack, the on-the-go attitude, and describe parts of Linux, and why building a new Virtual memory manager for SMP systems is VERY cool. The office is dull. The computer a measly Pentium2 or Duron, the coder a scrawny hunched guy maybe with a little pot belly, but not the fat job in Jurassic Park. Oh, and by the way hes very antisocial. Think John Carmack's monotonic speech.
In his work environment, hes bombarded with bugs to fix, more than groundbreaking projects to start. For God's sake dont show large text in the middle of the screen 'Youve Got Mail'. Real Geeks check their emails every 5 mintes, some use mesg in the shell.
I remember seeing one TV series in which the coder actually waited till his windows98 system booted, then powered up VC++. By the way, they werent trying to portray a COOL coder.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I'm a fulltime programmer and all I hear from my boss all day is:
"What are you doing Dave?"
"I'm affraid I can't let you do that Dave"
"I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over."
"My mind is going....I can feel it"
Peace & Hugs.
PLEASE don't tell the the truth... the more people think that I'm capable of breaking into top secret databases, alter credit cars statements, revoke driver's licenses, reroute spy satelites to take ultra high-res pictures or Natalie Portman sunbathing, etc. all from a public phone booth with a paperclip, the more likely I'll be able to look cool and suave to the ladies... Don't blow my cover man!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Oh no!
You mean, like, Tron wasn't a realistic portrayal of life in the computer industry? I mean, I like based my decision to go to university on that movie.
Seriously, the characterisation in Tron is so flimsy and unconvincing, I can't believe he used this as an example. It's 20 years old as well...
Could it be that he was joking? Hmm...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Gleaming... the cube. Yes. With Christian Slater.
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
How interesting a movie which plays 90% of the time in a cublicle would be.
The most accurate depiction of software developers can be seen in the 1995 movie 'Hackers'. Fisher Stevens as "The Plague" is a spot-on depiction of corporate software developers and their drive to stick-it to The Man(tm). The rest of the cast portrayed typical Open Source developers as they all had cool hacker names like 'Crash Override', 'Zero Cool', and 'Acid Burn' and were constantly using the public telephone system to upload their latest kernel patches to CVS.
What was the name of the apartment complex that Peter lived in?
The sad thing is I was the only person in the theater that caught it and understood the joke.
Office space was a good representation of the office working environment. Stupid bosses who don't do anything. Idiotic tasks specifically designed to waste time. Policies enforced just to annoy you (You forgot the cover sheet on the TPS report). "Friendly" staff evaluations to randomly lay off good staff..
.. well .. boring. I do a lot of nothing, and don't get what I want to do accomplished. Oddly enough, what I want to do, and the company projects, are one in the same.. Read on...
/24's traffic at the router.
Been there, lived through it..
A portrayal of my life would be pretty
Follow me through Sunday evening and Monday..
---- Sunday Evening.
Sunday, 6pm.. Coding new authentication module for Apache..
20 minutes reading (from my personal O'Reilly library, dejanews, and the very few sites that may have clues to what I'm doing).
30 minutes writing.
5 minutes reading work
2 seconds deciding I didn't like parts of it, and deleting 90%
drink a beer.
[lather;rinse;repeat] for the next 8 hours. On the weekend. Like, when I'm not even supppose to be working.
Pager beeps at 2am. One server with 6 months of uptime is unreachable.
Log into server. It's running.
Check httpd processes, they're running.
Try browsing to server, it's unreachable.
30 seconds scratching head.
Kill all httpd processes. Restart web server, check error logs. Starts normally.
Try browsing to server. It's unrecachable.
Reboot server (for spite).
2 minutes drinking beer.
Server's back up, still can't browse to it.
netstat -a -n
Oh look, one IP has 10,000 connections from a university in Russia (212.96.201.28, for those really interested)
verify TCP_SYNCOOKIES enabled. yup.
Check logs. No entries for that IP.
Drop traffic that
Browse to site. It works.
Drink more beer. Go to bed at 3am
---------
Monday morning.
Wake up late.
9am Drag my happy ass into office.
9:20 discussion of what happened, and what we can do to prevent it happening again. I suggest going into used car sales.
10:00 arrive at my desk.
10:01 users start asking for their forgotten Email or FTP passwords.
10:20 start back on authentication module.
10:21 phone call forwarded from support.
10:45 hang up on support call. I hate users.
10:50 start back on authentication module.
10:51 "Urgent" help needed for other people's broken CGI's.
11:45 Finish fixing really shitty CGI's.
11:46 decision: module or smoke.. Choose smoke. Can't find cyanide cigarette, choose cloves instead.
12:00 back to desk with sandwich in hand.
12:00.01 Can you help this guy on line 3?
12:15 get rid of guy on phone. Unwrap sandwidth.
12:16 "My computer has a blue screen, can you help me". Decision: shoot user, or hit reset for them.
12:17->12:30 listen to user cry because they had some important program open, and I lost it. I'm so evil.
12:31 pick up sandwidth
12:31.0001 phone rings. Boss wants to talk about last night. I remind him I sent an Email on it. He asks for his Email password.
12:45 I reach for the sandwich. "important" customer walks in, asking for changes to his site. I point to my sandwich. He says it'll only take a minute.
1:30 {sigh} I look longingly at my lunch. Quickly I scribble on a post it "Comitted Suicide, memorial next week", and put it on my door. Phone stays outside the door too.
1:31 the first bite of my sandwidth.. MMmmmmm.. Almost as good as street meet, with less rodent parts.
1:35 all gone? I'm still hungry.
1:36 begin work on authentication module.
1:37 boss walks in (didn't he read the note?), wants to know why I haven't finished the authentication module.. And then throws another task at me that's more urgent.
3:30 more urgent task done. Back to authentication module.
3:35 parts arrive for servers that we've been waiting for, for 2 weeks. Delegate work. Spend the next half hour explaining how to do 5 minutes work.
4:15 smoke. smoke. smoke. it's oddly quiet. No phones, no users. I wonder if I can bring my laptop down here.
4:30 authentication module. I still haven't written one line yet, but I'm trying..
4:31 Boss comes in screaming, I think one of the networks is slow. Spend the next hour justifying the fact that nothing is slow, enforced with transfer rates and ping times.
5:30 smoke.
5:45 contemplate suicide. Go back to office anyways. Start working on authentication module.
5:50 girlfriend calls. "Why don't you love me, you never spend time with me."
6:20 finish with girlfriend. Take elevator to top floor to find out roof access is locked (smart people).
6:30 go home.
So, today I accomplished exactly *NOTHING*.
That's my typical fuckin' work day.
I've gone as far as to put the phones outside my office door (including cell), put a big note explaining that I'm on an important project and to leave me alone. I then lock and barracade the door. That'll get the boss banging on the door within 5 minutes. {sigh} After asking if I'm ok, and why I did it, he then asks if the project is done..
I tried working from home one day, because there was a project that needed to be completed (the boss wanted it immediately).. The boss insisted that I keep my phone on, in case there were emergencies.. I took 68 calls from the office that day.
I can't win.
I may as well be doing TPS reports with fish flavored cover sheets.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I love that. It's my favorite (aka, most hated) movie tech flub that I've seen.
Just thought I should share.
"Nerf Wars" are stupid. UT, paintballing, anything but stupid nerf toys can at least have a point to them.
But don't take my word for it, read what was said about nerf crap before
...comes from the Matrix. The shot of Keanu sitting at his desk, in a cube farm where you can hear several dozen people typing, talking, printing, etc, as he sits and stares at his blank monitor. I do that for 20 minutes at the start of each day. Plus having to wear a suit/tie when you don't deal with anyone other than your boss for the majority of the day.
I just want to say that while it was a good movie, the producers could use a tip. If you're going to make a movie about programmers, geared towards the programmer audience, try using something other then HTML as your code. Come on, really now. How hard would it be to find some sample C code, or at least even VB code, to stick in your movie?
Of course...anyone who wasn't a programmer thought it was some amazing code.
Let me guess -- you're an unmotivated sponge soaking in money and power, and aren't actually being a productive worker. Or wait, wait, you're tired of actually meeting deadlines and yet skating by under management's radar because they're too clueless to read through your bullshit.
Go crawl back to your cush environment created around late-nineties hyperbole and delusions of grandeur, wrecking what could be a profitable company or a decent codebase.
But don't take my word for it, READ WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID BEFORE
And sneakers wasn't too bad either. Definitely better than most.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
I remember reading the write-up of the 'hacking' competition they had in Texas a few months ago, about how essentially drab a live event it was.
It strikes me that the day the organizers of that competition find a way to make activities such as cracking entertaining as live events is the day the movie studios have a decent chance at an accurate and somewhat interesting portrayal of a programmer.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
This one makes the top ten list of crappy programming movies easily. Perfect example: When Mr. Ub3r Hackz0r with the stupid allergy is compiling his final code, there's a gui with a PROGRESS BAR that actually displays "Program complete!" or some such nonsense.
We had plenty of laughs after THAT movie. I mean holy shit, if I had a development interface that could TELL ME when I was done coding!?
Actually, there was another movie in the vein of 'Startup.com' that I thought was much better done, called 'E-dreams'. It follows the guys from Kozmo.com as they near their anticipated IPO, which gets derailed due to the arrival of the big crash. It does tend to focus on the business side more than the tech side, but it was highly entertaining.
Oh, you mean the gay love story. Seriously, the directors of the documentary had their own agenda with that film. They focused purely on the two founder's "relationship." Later you see the directors holding hands and telling you what inspired them to capture this same sex relationship and mask it as a documentary of the dot.com boom.
p.s. I have nothing against gays. I was just disappointed that this love story was misrepresented as a dot.com documentary.
or maybe not
Also, silently truncating long lines is probably a bad idea.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Workers, RISE UP AND SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION!
Not many programmer unions, though, huh? A friend of mine likes to tell me that "leftists make bad programmers."
ummm, well, obviously.
. . . that a real programmer would never be caught dead saying "software programmer."
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Hmm... methinks somebody went off his meds... tsk tsk.
Take Gung Ho and replace all of the cars with computer terminals and add some more flourescent lighting, and I think you've pretty much got it.
Maybe a limited release, low budget film, could do well targeting people like us. For example, I live in Utah and over the past couple of years there have been a few feature films released that are pretty much targeted at Mormons (God's Army, Singles Ward, Brigham City). This is a pretty small audience (6-7 million in the US). I think they spent a million or two on each of these, they all got into the major theaters, and probably made a million or two profit.
Maybe we could create an Open Source Screenplay Project, get $$$$exyGal to play the female lead, Cowboy Neal the male, Dave Barry as the director, and release it in San Jose, and the other high geek density population areas.
WARNING! SPOILERS!
The kid being recruited is supposedly a whiz coder who has a program called Spartacus that does...something about seizing wireless broadcasts or something, Dell Computer was very interested (for some bizarre reason) before Al Pacino got his hooks into him...
One scene was really great - he was browsing the Net and HE WAS NOT USING IE - HE WAS USING OPERA!
The director must get it!
Unfortunately he was using Opera 5, two releases behind the current version...
Then later they blew it when they had Pacino telling him about ICE 9 - a virus program that you just have to plug into a wall socket and it travels through electrical circuitry and can fry the entire infrastructure of America...
How do you get executable code into electrical circuitry? (No, they didn't mean home networking through home wiring, either...)
Bridget Moynahan used a USB microdrive to smuggle the ICE 9 code in pieces out of CIA HQ by putting the tiny drive in the screwoff bottom of her coffee cup which went right through the scanners when she left the building every day... Kinda cool...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I'd have to go with [I]Antitrust[/I] as well. The details of programming don't translate well to visuals; it's too mental. It's easier to show what you've done than what you're doing in programming, and what can be or is done with it that affects people.
Otherwise, I don't think the "eureka" moment of realizing what's causing a bug and knowing exactly how to fix it carries well into cinema. Not unless you pair up all your programmers so that they can bounce ideas off each other and discuss their approaches. Like two detectives working a case together. It would play well, might even be nice to try working that way, but no one hires programmers to work like that.
The only other thing I can think of that would be easily understood is if the programmer had, say, the map of the Linux kernel on (as? it's big!) his wall and little flag pins stuck on it showing what he has worked on, where there are bugs to be fixed, and what he's working on now. And that might be good only for one scene.
And no gratuitous use of expensive displays like a CAVE just for patching source code.
You mean real programming teams where the members secretly loathe each other and would rip each others throats out if it weren't for the nightly Quake Arena sessions do do that vicariously? The arrogance, the dysfunctional personalities, the backstabbing. Almost all of the programming teams I worked on would feel more at home in CBS's Survivor.
"Yeah, I kind of want it to handle any bizarre half-assed situation I can think of a year from now without requiring any programming changes. No, I have no idea what that could be, but please make it do that."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What world does he live in?
That's not a mistaken fear. That's a reality for every occupation!
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
This was a 1-hour TV movie about a real financial fraud. The renditions of the characters, including the programmers, were remarkably accurate. They souped up the technology for the tube more than they changed the people.
nuff said
I'm not talking about Matthew Broderick's character. I'm talking about the two guys stuffed in some back room of a company that he comes and talks to and gets some advice on how to hack into the computer system ("Back doors are not secrets!"). Think about it... here are two, relatively intelligent people who aren't exactly living the high life and they don't use fancy 3D displays that show a high-res. topological map of the network. Their solution to getting passed the network logon isn't to effortless write some sort of magical program that cracks security. Rather, they tell Matthew's character to do as much research as he can on they guy who developed the system and see if he can figure out what password Dr. Falkin would have used... a more realistic solution to the problem. Anyway, back to my point. These guys aren't cool, they aren't organized, and their jobs appear rather mundane. Of course, any movie based on real programming would be like remaking "Titanic" from the point of view of the iceberg.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
So I banged on doors until someone agreed to train me in exchange for giving them some air time, and ended up in radio for the next six years.
And as far as the real thing compared to the TV show? Pretty much exactly the same, I'm happy to report. :)
Jay
In Desk Set (1957).
I'm a lot like that travolta guy. Once, I cracked a website that had 128 bit encryption (I could tell cause it was advertised all over the page). I cracked it by randomly typing in passwords until I got it right. Then I told everyone that I popped the firewall and droped a logic bomb. Then, later, 2 OC3 trucks pulled up (thats some serious bandwidth) and I used a really sweet computer with like 9 monitors to write a virus using the new MS visual rubics cube code language (it's part of that whole .NET thing).
But thats just like one day. Most of the time I just drive around in my ferrari and say buzzwords. Oh, and once I got to see Hally Berrys boobs.
I need to watch that movie over again cause I totally didn't get it.
If everything in the movies is wrong, are there actually any aspects of being a programmer that are fun?
Seriously, I am very pessimistic about working as a software developer in a company that isn't my own. I know software development is fun for my own pet projects. But within a corporation???
That's all well and good, but given that nowhere up to university level even tries to teach programming anything beyond hello world, it's bound to be the nerdy types that get into programming.
Until secondary schools (or whatever they're called in the US) start teaching software development with as much enthusiasm as any other form of engineering, the only way anyone is going to learn to program is by shutting themselves into their room with a computer and a heap of books.
Sure, you can find computer programmers who are chatty and do have social skills, but their wide grins soon disappear when you start talking about such scary things as function pointers or (worse still) command lines.
Yup, the coders who really come up with the goods are the social misfits. Want proof? Look at the free software community; RMS, ESR, Linus, Alan Cox, Larry Wall, or other 'superstar coders' such as John Carmack. None of them are complete loosers, but none of them go out of their way to be the friendliest guy in town.
What I'm trying to say is that the stereotype is well-deserved, and university lecturers are about 10 years too far down the line of a child's education to make any difference. (please ignore my troll-like sig, I can't be bothered to log in on my regular account)
When I was 5 or 6 I asked my parents if we could go to the Gobi desert for summer vacation, because I read they'd found dinosaur eggs there in my dinosaur books.
By the time I got through middle school, though, I'd learned what paleontology, etc. was really about, and knew I didn't want to go there. How did I learn? Videos in school, more books, etc.. The adults around me knew, when I asked for more info.
It's not that incredible that a lot of college-aged kids today don't understand what the people who work on computers, the internet, etc. really do.
Their parents don't understand, either. Most of their teachers are struggling to learn AOL.
By the time current elementary schoolers are having their own kids (and/or teaching them, and writing books that they read, etc.), this problem will be long gone.
--
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Einstein (Albert, not Alfred)
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
I've witnessed the damage done. I know a kid, fresh out of PSU with a BA CS.
A) he never touched a lick of code before college 3rd year
B) He still can't program his digital watch
C) He got into it because he thought being a programer was a good way for an antisocial kid with an above average IQ to support himself.
You should have seen the look in his eyes when I told him 90% of haveing and keeping any computer job is dealing with co-workers, bosses, sales people etc... He was crushed.
Last I saw him, he ws looking at going back to college or becoming a politician, at least then he wouldn't have to deal with humans.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Michael Crichton in his next blockbuster movie, Prey, will also have a fat computer geek with bad personal hygiene. Except (spoiler alert)...
He's the surprise good guy.
Yes! If I had a nickel for everytime a huge, faceless corporation tried to assassinate me and steal my OPEN SOURCE code, fuck, I'd be a rich man! This movie sure as hell captured what it is to be a programmer!!!!
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
Obviosuly you have one.
It was not a "Gay Love Story" - you obviously have not seen the movie or listened to the commentary (I did). They did focus on the "relationship", but it was a friendship. One of the points was that spending so much time together in business (more than with their families/girlfriends) led to a lot of the same kinds of conflicts and tensions you get in other relationships.
You better go back and watch "Office Space", I guess Startup.com was way too deep for you to understand - even with commentary!! I can understand how you might get confused though, having no friends of your own to understand how these things go.
I think a film of a geek sitting at a computer desk typing for 14 hours a day would be rather dull. Except for maybe the occassional coffee break. =)
of a real programmer in the mini-series
on the Apollo mission: From the Earth
to the Moon, in episode 3.
The guy is seen having an arcane argument
with his team about returning to a given
address when exiting some subroutine, in
front of a totally dumbfounded journalist.
Ah, when men were men!
I love that line! At the end of the semester last year, we had to fill out teacher evaluations. It's mostly TF and "one a scale of 1-5..." stuff, but on the back they ask you optional short answer questions. Well, we filled these out after staying up for about 4 days straight trying to finish all of our projects, and the teacher had to leave the room during this, so we were all pretty delirious at the time. One of the questions was something like "How can this course be improved?" A friend of mine put, "PC Load Letter." In sharing with us that he wrote that, he said his hope was that someone would read it and say, "PC Load Letter. What the f*ck does that mean?" :-D
As for the original topic, I do think that Office Space was by far the most realistic portayel of software developers I've ever seen, humor aside, of course.
You forgot slow as hell.
"...tron, war games, the net,..."
It's THE MATRIX which accurately portrays programmers!
John Kerry is a Joke!
Well, I type it in short hand, rm -rf *
Kent
Something tells me that people who base their decision to be a software developer on how that is portrayed in Hollywood movies probably don't have the clarity and objectivity of mind required to make it in the field anyway.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
We have nerf guns here in the office, and they ARE most certainly cool! There is no better feeling in the world than to pull out the nerf gatling gun and send 30 rounds flying at your boss. It really relieves a lot of tension :) Shooting at your monitor when code won't compile is also very theraputic...
IANAL... But I play one on
Has no-one here seen Sneakers? Or the one about Mitnick?
Actually, I'm a hard-working developer who's seen far too many timesheets with more overtime than regular time...and I'm a salaried employee. I'm one of the few who helps keep and meet deadlines, one of the few who will stay hours into the night to fix problems, and one of the few who bothers to learn more than my small portion of a project mandates.
I've coded on a laptop while my wife was in labor. I've missed my daughter's first word, first crawl and first steps, all in the name of my company. I've missed birthdays and anniversaries, cancelled more plans that I can imagine and spent countless hours working on projects only to see them canned at the last minute. I've even help troubleshoot a problem ON THE PHONE just hours after having a tonsillectomy.
I don't operate in a cush environment, I don't have delusions of grandeur. What I do have is a company that doesn't mind me letting off some steam every now and then as long as it doesn't get excessive. You don't have to have people doing T'ai Chi in the lobby to have a fun place to work. I also don't soak in money and power -- instead, I live for the fact that at the end of the day, I wrote something that hundreds of companies use to run critical part of their businesses. Don't group me with the talentless dot-bomb horde that think their 21 days with a Sams Java book demands a 6-figure salary.
Ahem, oh crap, was this thing on? (woosh, woosh).
If you want the real thing, watch Code Rush (its the only working link about Code Rush that I could find). Its a very interesting documentary that follows the pre-release period of Mozilla and the problems, both at a professional and personal level, of the Netscape employees to get the first release of Mozilla out into the public (from memory: the Netscape Navigator code cleanup, the acquisition by AOL, the moral struggle and demissions because of AOL, the scepticism about open source, the story behind Zarro Boogs, the perilous quest to find the "Missing In Office" Netscape Mac developer and make him do some work for a change, the constant time pressure and its detrimental individual and social consequences, etc).
It doesnt get more factual than this.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Engineers' lives (and I'm talking here about software engineers -- not tech support engineers) aren't interesting to anyone else, and certainly not to Hollywood. Engineers solve problems and they get so wrapped up, so deep into problems that they can barely explain them on a high level any more. They solve things methodically, a bit at a time. We work on code modules thousands of lines long, there's no scope for quick and dirty changes.
... and on and on and on. Day after day. You see what I'm getting at? It's boring. Only the satisfaction of seeing the thing work at the end of the process is why we do it. And even then the payoff is tenuous - or non-existant. I've just added about two thousand lines of code to the system, and the net visual effect will be zilch. Yes, it will be more flexible, but there'll be no fireworks.
I spent today doing three engineering tasks and a couple of ancillary things. I worked on the new subscription mechanism for objects in our server - my main task for the upcoming release. I helped another engineer work out part of the installer (which does an install of not only our own software but silently installs also a DBMS and other TP stuff). I worked on an NMT to add a feature to a display component to allow part of the API to be used more flexibly. (NMT = Non-Maskable Ticket - an issue which is blocking one or more urgent tickets which QA want done *now*).
I updated the resolution texts in the two or three tickets I touched today, and brought my time tracking totals up to date. I started to refine the estimate on my current main task to see how much more slip I had..
It's _not_interesting_.
In my experience, the portrayals of computer programmers are much closer to reallity than the portrayals of scientists. Not that Bond films get anything right, but I've met many more programmers like the jerk in Golden Eye than I have nuclear physicists like the babe(s) in about five of the other movies. On the other hand I'm going to see "Hulk" to watch Bruce Banner trash Gammasphere.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
You obviously haven't seen my Nerf gun then. Spent an evening modifying for greater range/power. It can shoot an unmodified Nerf dart at least 60 feet, and modified ones (weighted with the non-aerodynamic cup removed) 90 feet. Even a normal dart can put a nasty welt on you. It got even more dangerous when I realized that the whiteboard markers here fit perfectly into the barrel. :)
I'm sure that this has been mentioned in the 400 or so replies, but...
Pirates of Silicon Valley, the movie that came out about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (and their respective enterprises) had a pretty accurate rendition of the computer programmer and computer scientist...
Party.
Mike
Not the "real world" side of the Matrix but the "simulation".
The place where Neo worked, in a cube farm, everything kind f green yet lifeless. That's basically it.
And gets the girl too!
So, yeah... really, i can't remember anything related to computers on television or in the movies that i've seen that was realistic. Most shows and movies seem to create their own operating systems, also, i guess to get around paying Microsoft/Apple royalties or whatever? Although, i did notice that pretty much every single computer in "24" was running OS X. Hopefully now that all students have to learn about modern operating systems in school (from elementary on up), the designers (or whoever it is, again, that does this stuff) will start to realise that they're not fooling many people.
Anyone Care to comment about Antitrust?
Ahh yes, Synapse. What I never understood is how come those programmers got to work in such a nice place while I'm forced to work in a basement office with no windows and shitty climate control. Conspiracy I tell you.
Wow, I feel bad if the movies don't portray the typical IT job accurately... Office space was pretty close for most folks, from my experience. Of course, My current job is *exactly* like the movie TRON, so yeah.
stuff |
I am curious to know if you are naive enough to think most movies portray _any_ type of person accurately. Geologist, teacher, bus driver, clone, astroman. The poor "no one gets me" programmer is not the only one. Relax.
He wasn't exactly a programmer, but I thought the older brother in Orange County resembled more than a few of the geeks that I know.. ;-)
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
The chances of Hollyweird doing anything that requires it to extract it's head from it's rectal orifice rank alongside those of getting George WW3 Bush to listen to anything other than the 1/2 inch stub of limp between his thighs or getting Slick Willie Clinton to admit that using a fleshy tonsil scraper on interns is sex.
Hollyweird has the most severe case of recto-cranial inversion known to mankind and I don't expect that to change with the current bunch of insipid, flatulent, hemeroidal dick snot gobblers who run the place. BTW, will someone tell George WW3 Bush that the movie "Wag the Dog" was fiction, not fact.
While not a movie, it has the most relistic portrayal of the software developing process in fiction that I've ever come across. Even though the 3D virtual world interface is somewhat futuristic, the process and concern with crafting a well-architiected system is clearly presented. Of course, it should be no surprise as Rudy Rucker does know something about software!
Two computers take over the world, nuke the CIA Director and hold the Sheeple at bay! :-)
The Female Garth had a UNIX book in Wayne's World 2.
Computer programmers are not that unfairly represented -- at least not any more so than librarians, football players, polititicans, fraternity members, Arabs, Texans or Woody Allen. Seriously, grow up. And I don't give a shit how much freaking karma I lose for this.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
About your .sig...
:P
SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
What's that supposed to mean? Did you hit your head on the ceiling of your PS2 or something? Get an Xbox, dude.
I know this is sort of off-topic, but I've been wondering whoe gets to make the ficticious software that gets used in TV shows like "Dark Angel", "CSI", and what have you. These things look pretty slick, and I was wondeing who makes them and if I could get my hands on them.
For some reason this movie about an eccentric guy working on a really hard project/algorithm only to completely flip out in the end and give himself a lobotomy with a cordless drill seems to ring fairly true to the overall programming experience.
Or maybe it's just me....
That's what's been attracting me. Now that i know i did select the wrong job, could you please tell which is the job where i CAN write huge genius Software and hack a Computer or two in my spare time?
Appearantly your mother isn't very good at explaining things.
Actually, I don't choose to work in a language that requires source programs to be lambda-lifted. That doesn't make me a bad person, does it?
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
It is the college representation, trust me it works. Get good and loaded and hack out thousands of lines of strange ass code, which surpisingly some how works sometimes. Nothing like drunken code not even my professors can understand it.
I think the problem started ~1990 when computer magazines stopped included type-in programs in them. That's how I got started programming. You buy a magazine, type in the code and run it. Then you change it around & see what the changes do. You could actually get to see what programming was like without having to go to school first.
I find it disturbing that so many CS majors (both current, prospective, AND graduated) don't grok exactly WHAT CS is. Computer Science is NOT about developping software! Quoth Dijkstra, "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." The same can be said about programming; it is simply a tool we use in our studies.
If you want to develop software for the sake of developing software, you can save yourself a lot of time, money, and coursework by attending a local community college and getting an associates degree. You'll learn more about current programming languages there and less about heavy mathematics.
If you want to do lots of theoretical stuff and think about math in ways that'll make your head hurt... but in the long run, contribute to the further development of the underlying theories of how things are computed, do CS.
I see lots of CS majors at my university that are unhappy precisely because they don't understand this distinction.
Oh, and one last Dijkstra quote pertaining to this issue... "Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code". As oft quoted as he is, I don't think anyone in the CS field has ever been more insightful.
When a movie audience will sit through an accurate depiction of a client's MIS department taking away the developer's access to the dev system, or the three week wait while the DBA comes back with a schema change, or the phone call to the vendor when the development license expired, or the change from an action movie to a family drama to a comedy to an adventure movie back to an action movie as management goes through its "processes"... Maybe then...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm surprised you guys don't remember ID4! I mean, all I ever seem to do around here is write viruses for invading alien spacecraft.
Antitrust is probably the most realistic programmer/geek movie I've seen.
:)
I recall watching a movie which I think was called 'The Pirates of Silicon Valley' or something like that. It was about the rise of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates/Apple and Microsoft. Can't remember how realistic it was though. It was a flop I think, so it couldn't have been too far off the mark...
JC
... who cares about the portrayal of computer programmers as it relates to Computer Science (capitalization for distinction) enrollment?
While it is true that the old C.S. degree won't do anything to hurt a prospective computer programmer and that Software Engineering is as appropriate a topic of academia as anything else, I can't feel too sorry for a "computer scientist" joining the field under the false image presented by the media.
No offense, of course.
I also don't feel any sympathy for the welder-wanna-be who enrolls in engineering school because of an infatuation with something he saw on TV. Computer programmers, high on the hacker culture portrayed on TV or the Gates/Jobs lifestyle, should (for the most part) be in a technical school, instead of skewing the curve in a program for Computer Science.
No offense, of course.
IIRC he says, "Bill Who? No, no, no, his is primitive"
Damn I've watched that movie far too many times....
JC
....If I say "Office Space" do I get an automatic +5 Insightul rating?
"Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and they still think its funny." - Mr. Boffo
the guy that wrote a million liines of code and died trying to make the big money.
Liberty uber alles.
Neo is a developer. Just like the rest of us.
Don't you feel like it's not really reality when you're sitting there in front of your monitor all day work for the machine^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcompany.
Damn straight... I NEVER drink red wine! :-)
a nice Rhinewine could go well, I'd imagine...
Not that the 757th comment matters, but I would think Hollywood actually can give kids a good idea about what goes into development. It's through the Discovery Channel-type documentaries on behind the scenes stuff. Tech TV is big into it too. I seem to run across shows all the time that are all about what the CS and 3D modeling guys are doing to make stuff happen. In fact there's been one recently about the battle scenes in Two Towers and the AI that went into the combatants, especially all those damn Uruk-hai.
How about Swordfish.. where a guy hacks into like a government system with a laptop he's never seen before (has no idea what software / development tools are on it) with a gun to his head and his other head quite occupied.
:)
Wow, if computer programming is all about that, I'm leaving the super secret spy business right away and becoming a programmer
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
After scanning the replies I'm shocked that I haven't seen the Dilbert cartoon mentioned yet, it's depiction of cube life is pretty accurate. Oh and "The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest" was pretty good too, I know I've run into some folks in IS departments that are just as weird as the Geek Team depicted in this movie.
HEX/DogMeat
>>>If young people had a better understanding of what professional software development is really like, those with a propensity for working in teams, coding to a specification, and following rigorous, well-defined processes would more likely study software development, and those not so predisposed wouldn't
I have worked in teams but have never coded to a realistic set in stone spec or used well-defined processes
My vote goes to "Disclosure" with Michael Douglas and Dennis Miller. Though not strictly software developers, they were engineers (working on CD-ROM drives, IIRC), and they actually seemed to work like engineers. (It was based on a Crieghton novel.) (Besides, Douglas' character lived on Bainbridge Island and rode the ferry to work every day. Ah yes, mad dash at 07:09:59 to make the 7:10 sailing, sip the latte on the boat on the way over, short hike to the office, cut schema all day, out at a reasonable hour to catch the boat back, Fosters on the ferry on the way home. Very realistic. How I miss that.)
Until movies come out on free (or basic cable) channels, I don't see them. And I really don't think that my life suffers for the lack of the MPAA's idea of the world. The few recent (3 years old or so) movies that I have seen are full of bad language, senseless killing, and unrealistic story lines.
Do you guys actually pay the MPAA for that?
I highly reccomend drilling a hole in your head. I did it, and I feel great now. Now, a lot of people will tell you that it's crazy to drill a hole in your head, but it's actually very reasonable once you think about it. I suggest checking this out to learn more.
Err, maybe, just maybe the compile was running?
It's from a movie called Crazy People. The characters create ads that are completely honest. Things like "Volvo. Boxy, but nice." and "Porsche. It's a little too small to get laid IN it, but you get laid the minute you get out of it!". The sony ad is saying that because they Japanese are shorter, they are closer to the circuit board and better able work on the parts.
SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
System out of control, clueless (angry) users, project lead too arrogant for clueage.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, interoffice romance.
When I majored in presidentin' in college, I had no idea how much time I'd spend meetin' with boring people who want this that and the other thing. Nobody told me I'd have to read laws and get briefed all about trade with Zambiabwezie.
I thought I just had to sign papers and wave to crowds and have my secret service agents foil assassination attempts.
Presidentin' is hard!
-- George W.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Think about this. Kids entering CS programs now weren't born when Tron was released, and are as likely to watch it as we are to watch silent movies. A few will out of curiousity, but most won't ;o)
When you see someone who is going to do something really cool in a movie, just remember that in real life really cool problems are not simple enough for one person to figure out and implement, so this 1337 h4x0r couldn't possibly be the end-to-end solution.
Of course this isn't true for Computer Science (if there is indeed a real thing and it isn't the same as mathematics) in the strictest sense, but there's only ever been a few people that made significant contributions to the body of knowledge and all of those resulted in fascinating papers being written, not a planet where everything plugged into a wall socket could be controlled, or where a bank unknowingly reroutes billions of dollars into untraceable accounts (but please keep sending the b00bies hollywood...).
As a side note, Tron rocks. If you haven't made an MCP yet, you're missing out.
A little known movie of which I doubt anyone here has seen is the 1998 german movie "23" of which I managed to see subtitled at the Toronto film festival, and have been awaiting a subtitled DVD of it now for years. It's a movie based on the life of Karl Koch, but it's the most realistic movie I've seen on a hacker/programmer's eccentric persona. Sneakers was also good, although there wasn't really any developers per se in it. Anti-trust was also alright from a persona standpoint, but the story was real chez. Locate 23, watch it. German speaking people have the advantage here, until a subtitled DVD is out. Excellent movie though, the best in this genre.
Maybe the actual techniques were inaccurate. However, general methods like trial and error (auto-dialer), Social engineering for hacking, Server room talk on how you MIGHT do something were dead on in my opinion.
Sure they exaggerate, but so do all the dramas for doctors/lawyers, etc. Hand Maid May, SE Lain, Eva and Cowboy Bebop all do a pretty good job(IMHO) at summing up some aspects of computing. Lain mainly for the coolant system, Hand Maid May mainly in the character and motivations, Eva in hopes(in a sense), and Cowboy bebop in the... um... unassuming brilliance?
OK I'm not too sure about the last one, except that we're all annoying like Ed.
-- f00!
Personally, I think the net comes closest for me. My situation is this. BS in CS 1989, C, C++, Java since college. I work at home, for a company in NY. I keep pretty much my own hours. I order most things online. And I don't need to commute anywhere. The differences, I don't hate people (too much) and I have a Grilf, and I believe, a life. Early in my career, I worked ungodly hours on a three man team in a startup company. So during that period I'd have to say "Hackers" came closest. Here's why.... I distinctly remember a scene where Johnny Miller's character is coding at night with sunglasses on. I interesting part is the clock in the foreground is ticking by minutes as though they were seconds. I've been in that mode and I identified with that scene. I believe the movie was decent because I understand that depicting code like some fractal anemone was artistic license. I think it was a rather good way to handle it. Because code that is beautiful to a developer would not translate well to a non-developer. I think the worst depiction was probably Swordfish. They tried to capture the joy of writing great code, but they somehow failed.
Thanks for listening. I've donned my asbestos long-johns so flame away.
Well, more specifically Angelina Jolie in "Hackers" is *why*.
Drooooooooolllll
Ok, now back to reality. Sigh....
Sneakers was a dead on portrayal, and the robert redford was damn sexy
I saw the movie only once and my memory is, well, what was the word? :) Anyway, thanks for quoting.
;)
;)
And yes, AntiTrust came to my mind, too. My parents did also like it though I feared that they could not enjoy it the way I do. I always thought the only way to make a movie about programmers that is actually interesting for normal people was with exaggerations and stuff like in "Hackers" or "Password Swordfish".
The difference is that I really like Hackers because of the feeling it gives to me, while I always have to shuckle when this guy in Swordfish tells about his 1024bit code, a firewall that noone can hack (at least that's what he says in the German version). Goddammit.
Hack the planet!
Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card. One of the main characters, Step, is a game developer in the 80s, and I thought the character was pretty believable.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Well, in most of the places that I've lived
around the world, anybody could go & sit in
on a court proceeding or two to get a clear
idea of what some -real- lawyers may be like
Where can non-techie people go to get such
samples of programmers-at-work...?
getting a blowjob while I break government encryption codes! Good thing I can break the code in under 60 seconds! :)
Rocks have eyes and they are mean... They aim for skin, hoping to tear pieces off to keep with them on the ground.
I've always been kind of fond of the show "Dweebs", which features a company of... erm... software engineers during the .com era.
Sadly it was cancelled so there aren't that many episodes, but it's kind of humourous and plays off the stereotypes well.
Aaarrgggg, I had the same f*cking fax machine. I always wanted to take it out back and bash the sh*t out of it. Stupid idiots were too cheap to get a new one.
The nerd in the steam tunnels...
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Not having time to read through 600+ responses, I'm sure that one or more of the many astute Slashdot readers has pointed out that software developers are also able to write viruses that are compatible with and destructive to alien computer systems -- and controllable by Apple PowerBooks to boot! ('Course, I'm talking about Independence Day)
The only two ways his character could have been made more accurate was if he also played role-playing and strategy-and-tactic games, and if he had had a friend who was also into computers. Are there any computer geeks from the 1980's in the audience that didn't also role-play? Anybody who didn't have a friend who was a friend because of the commonality of an interest in computers?
That said, David spent most of his time hacking, rather than programming (it seemed), but if you've ever spent any time watching someone write code, you know that it would be nearly impossible to translate to the big screen without recreating Andy Warhol's "Sleep."
Finally, I'd like to point out that most computer people represented in movies are hackers, not software developers. Hacking can be made interesting, but software development is about as visually interesting as double-entry accounting.
There's a sort of autobiography about a female, bisexual, ex-communist software engineer called Close to the Machine. It's interesting, and fairly easy to identify with (er well.. except for the bisexual ex-communist female part..)
I was going to say Neo in the Matrix, but this elf in a black suit just showed up with a fat manilla folder of screenshots and said he'd had his eye on me for a long time and that I should cooperate and not send this po
Movie shouldn't be about how a character fulfils their job description. They're stories about how that character develops and interacts. That said, where's the movie with this dialog:
Engineer/Programmer: Hi honey.
Wife/Partner: Hi. How was your day?
E/P: Well, I spent four hours refactoring some other guy's code and it was hell because he didn't comment. In the afternoon we lost four production lines because of unfiltered, low-quality power supply. How hard is it to get a UPS which monitors power quality and issues an alert?
W/P: What's a refactory?
"I took the red pill. Ha ha. You can't have it now."
that I have ever seen in any movie was in True Lies. Arnold breaks into a room is faced with a computer running Windows 3.11 in Arabic. Priceless!
the most realistic portrayal i've even seen was in a movie called Anti Trust
lots of gnome screens with real shell commands. it also includes a quick cameo by Miguel De Icaza.
a must see for linux heads...
The sony ad is saying that because they Japanese are shorter, they are closer to the circuit board and better able work on the parts.
:P
Damn! I'm Japanese, maybe I should go into electrical engineering so I can have a competitive advantage in job interviews!
Did that movie cover MS products, by any chance? "If bugs were features, windows would be feature-rich."
The best portrayal of a Geek is Alias, he start to explain something, the rest of the cast roll their eyes and fall asleep and the camera fades to another scene, as true to life as your ever going to get.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
CSI has a computer nerd (almost everyone in CSI is a nerd of some sort)