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A Short History of Computers In the Movies
Esther Schindler writes "The big screen has always tried to keep step with technology usually unsuccessfully. Peter Salus looks at how the film industry has treated computing. For a long time, the 'product placement' of big iron was limited to a few brands, primarily Burroughs. For instance: 'Batman: The Movie and Fantastic Voyage (both 1966) revert to the archaic Burroughs B205, though Fantastic Voyage also shows an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central. At 250 tons for each installation (there were about two dozen) the AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer ever built, with 60,000 vacuum tubes and a requirement of 3 megawatts of power to perform 75,000 ips for regional radar centers. The last IBM AN/FSQ-7, at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, was demolished in February 1984.' Fun reading, I think."
For kids of the 1980s this movie was first exposure towards the medium. Additionally it heralded the dawn of the hacker and government misunderstanding of the hacker capabilities -- specifically some of the problems Kevin Mitnick faced. Really surprised it wasn't mentioned.
A lot of people in programming think its purely a young mans game. That may have been true in the 60s and 70s but its not any longer. That old guy (or gal) you see shuffling down the street may have once coded up some pretty neat algorithm that helped fly your plane or did your banking or controlled the fuel injection on your car in the 80s. It would be nice to have an article about retired coders, what they did and their opinions of the dev world now. And whether vi is better than emacs ;o) No, scrap that last idea...