iced-tee

Following up our article: Top 20 Hackers in Film History and Vibrant’s Top 10 Servers in the movies,
I felt obligated to dispel some of the notions about programming that
these movies endorse.  I understand that Hollywood needs to dress
things up to make them more entertaining, but in the case of
programmers, code, and hackers they’ve done more than dress things up
- they’ve morphed a little stuffed teddy bear into a cybernetic polar
bear covered in christmas lights and phosphorescent hieroglyphics with
a fog machine pumping rainbow smoke out of his ass.   In other words,
they’ve layered a ridiculous amount of extravagance on top of something
that in reality is very grounded.

1. Code does not move
In
films and television code is always sailing across the screen at
incredible speeds; it’s presented as an indecipherable stream of
letters and numbers that make perfect sense to the programmer but
dumbfound everyone else.  I understand that to the non-savvy person the
abilities of a programmer might seem amazingly complex, but do they
honestly think we can read shit that isn’t sitting still?  It’d be like
trying to read six newspapers flying around in a tornado.    Sure, I
can watch a kernel compile, tail a log file, or simply monitor the
scrolling output of a program - but the most value I get out of those
activities is when execution stops and I can actually scroll back to
read what the hell happened (unless the output was going slow enough I
could read it as it happened).

2. Code is not green text on a black background
Sure,
code can be green text on a black background if you want it to, but
most programmers use syntax highlighting and sysadmins configure their
shell to use ANSI color.

3. Code has structure
According
to the movies all programmers abhor the space bar and enter key.  In
the real world code has structure - it’s got line breaks, spacing, and
indentation.  Granted, we’ve all written our share of unreadable hacks:
I used to write a lot of perl and I had a knack for writing nasty
regular expressions that moved many of my successors to committing
seppuku, but those days are over.  It’s all about clarity now. 

4. Code is not three dimensional
Remember
in "hackers" when the gibson is depicted as a three dimensional city
that the hackers must navigate through? Bullshit! We may use a dash of
color in our shell to make things a bit clearer, but last I checked my
terminal app doesn’t require OpenGL.   I’m working here, bitches - I’m
not playing quake.

5. Code does not make blip noises as it appears on the screen
This
goes for ANY text, not just code.   When text appears on my monitor it
doesn’t make blip sounds - this isn’t 1902 (or whenever monitors used
to do that). 
This is one of the most common offenses in Hollywood
films, almost every movie that has a scene where a character is
composing an email or surfing the net has the text make blippity-blip
sounds as it appears.  Do they have any idea how fucking irritating
that would be in real life?    This article alone would be like thirty
thousand blippity-blips.

6. Code cannot be cracked by an 8 year old kid in a matter of seconds
Sorry, no.  Just no.   

7. Not all code is meant to be cracked
Hollywood
loves to endorse the notion that programming, encryption, and complex
computing in general are all the same thing: a jumble of secretive data
that must be broken by a seriously (srsly!) clever hacker.  This is
somewhat understandable because the term "code" itself is ambigious.
In the realm of computing, code typically has two definitions:

1. The symbolic arrangement of instructions that a computer can understand - like "Your PHP code is shit"
2. The disguised transformation of a message - "The Navajo code talkers in WWII"
   

Hollywood
usually applies #2 to all of a programmer’s computing activities.
There are no windows to drag, no enclosing brackets or IF statements,
there’s no desktop.  Everything on the computer takes the form of an
encrypted message, which must make looking at hot steamy pr0n a real
bitch (md5 makes me flaccid).

8. Code isn’t just 0100110 010101 10100 011
Sure,
when you get down to the binary level it’s a bunch of 1’s and 0’s, but
who does that?  I’ve never met anyone who codes binary. 
Hey
Hollywood directors: programmers use this neat thing called the
ALPHABET.  It’s got letters that you put together to form words.  We
even put spaces between those words (see #3).   

Also, the
whole joke about everything on a computer being just a bunch of 1’s and
0’s has become painfully not funny.  It ranks right up there with the
joke about the user who uses his cdrom tray as a cupholder, I’m pretty
sure I’d heard that joke a thousand times by 1997.   Just because all
data on a computer is ultimately represented by one or a zero doesn’t
mean that the basis behind it is as simple as a one or a zero.  That’s
like saying all humanity ultimately boils down to a bunch of carbon
atoms (or whatever the hell we’re made of), so the next time someone steals my car   I can laugh it off and say "Oh those silly carbon atoms!"

9. People who write code use mice
According
to Hollywood most programmers haven’t discovered how to use a mouse. 
Sure, we type fast, but a mouse is a very useful tool and there’s no
reason we’d abandon it.  While we’re dispelling stereotypes, I’d also
like to say that not all programmers are hot-pocket eating virgins who
play WoW.  Some of us exercise and have active social lives.  Some have
even had SEX! Holy Crap!

10. Most code is not inherently cross platform
Remember
in Independence Day when whatshisface-math-guy writes a virus that
works on both his apple laptop AND an alien mothership?  Bullshit!
If real life were like film I’d be able to port wordpress to my toaster using a cat5 cable and a bag of glitter.