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?"

duh.

[Telastyn]

Has the film industry portrayed any normal person accurately? No. Normal people are boring.

so what's new?

[mgs1000]

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...

They're always background characters.

[dpplgngr]

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's not just programmers

[marsvin]

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.

Life of a Software Programmer

[Nept]

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.

RevolutionOS

[ForsakenRegex]

It doesn't get anymore accurate.

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0308808

Re:duh.

[mike_mgo]

Exactly.

Most cops aren't out there chasing down serial killers, most lawyers aren't fighting some evil corporation, and I doubt many spies blow up a whole lot of stuff. But movies about writing traffic tickets, filing divorce papers and staring at satellite photos aren't that exciting.

You've really got to get out a little more if you're basing career decisions on the movies.

Re:Office Space

[ides]

Yeah Office Space or maybe even the fat guy in the original Jurassic Park. His attitude I have seen mirrored in many a developer.

Realistic

[sagwalla]

I am sure Slashdot readers have some input on this, and I am curious if people believe _any_ movie has acurately portrayed software developers?

Weird Science?

Alot of misrepresentation in movies

[aridhol]

Nothing in the movies is ever represented properly. Face it. Who would watch a cop show if 95% of it was patrolling the streets issuing parking tickets?

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.

Re:Most Accurate Portrayal of a Computer Award...

[SirSlud]

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?

Its how you can almost bet that any car you need to make a getaway in, in a movie, is bound to need 3 minutes of engine turning to start ...

Can we ditch that cliche already, hollywood? Both of them?

become an actor

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Well...

[iamdrscience]

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.

Archaeology has the same problem.

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

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

scientists

[meridoc]

"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?

Priates of Silicon Valley

[Kadagan AU]

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~

Thanks Hollywood..

[Dragonshed]

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.

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 :p

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.

Documentary

[redragon]

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! :)

Re:Office Space

[Root Down]

The whole issue of 'flair' and the office issues are really one and the same: it's all about being ra-ra-ra for a company that is much less ra-ra-ra in return. It's all 'smile pretty and join the team or you're outta here' - no matter how much you detest its inanity.

Did you get the memo about the TPS report?

Software Programmers hardly alone

[damieng]

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.

Why would anyone want to accurately portray?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:duh.

[DaveAtFraud]

The *first rule* for viewing anything that comes out of Hollywood is SUSPEND DISBELIEF. Why stop at complaining that Hollywood doesn't portray "normal people" accurately? Hell, these are the same people whose guns never run out of ammunition (unless its needed for the plot), people firing pistols can hit their target from a car going 90 mph down a bumpy residential street while the driver swerves to avoid obstacles and someone else shooting back at them, explosions in space make noise, tires squeal on dirt roads, etc. Why take Hollywood to task for not accurately portraying some "normal people" when they can't even accurately portray physical reality?

This may explain why my taste in movies from Hollywood tends towards commedies (they're supposed to not represent reality) or fantasy (what reality?).

Ok, I'll go for one less obvious then

[kfg]

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

The real question is...

[elluzion]

Has there ever been any movie that accurately portrayed any profession?

Re:Doctors, Lawyers, and Cops

[biobogonics]

"Why not a show about engineers?"

Go out and rent Apollo 13. It has some of the best engineers as hero scenes on film - complete with computers & slide rules.

Remember the scenes where they have to power up the frozen command module without going over budget on amperage? Yes, software development is sometimes like that - with severe constraints, painstaking work and testing - and rewarding results.

Re:duh.

[Minna Kirai]

"The Patriot" depicted events which bore no resemblance to the actual conduct of the Revolutionary War. Nothing plausible about them at all.

There were a handful of well-documented atrocities against civilians [earlyamerica.com], but nothing on the scale presented in that film. The British were trained to conduct a very "civilized" style of warfare, and although this was stressed by the colonists' reluctance to wear uniforms, they never attacked obvious civilians.

In particular, the burning of a church [demon.co.uk] full of civilians is something that the forces of Vlad the Impaler and Adolf Hitler have both done, but the Redcoats would never consider such a thing.

What if I created a film about a real 14th centruy Pope, and had him conduct murderous Black Masses? Would that be OK? It would all depend on how it was portrayed. If an obvious fantasy, then it's fine. If I use it merely as the backdrop for some other story, and present those events as if they'd really happened, then I've committed a double wrong: my audience has been mis-educated, and the Vactican has been defamed.

"The Butcher" really did exist

The fact that he did exist makes more wrong. To create a fictional man to commit warcrimes is one thing. To invent major atrocities and assign them to a person who merely executed some prisoners is another. (His actions were somewhat defensible even by modern rules of war. "Spies"- combatants without uniforms- were often executed in 20th century combat)

You want to watch some guy wash colonial dishes for two hours? I sure don't.

We could watch some guy battle British troops for two hours. That really happened, and would be exciting. We could even exaggerate the hero's prowess, and let him play decisive role in every major battle. But the producer of "The Patriot" decided to underscore the hero's goodness by exaggerating his enemy's badness, and in so doing, libelled an entire nation.

• Fictional man, doing good: no problem.
  
• Real man, doing good: Author may be misrepresenting the truth, but it's positive, so there's few complaints.
  
• Fictional man, doing bad: The audience knows it's all fake, so no harm done.
  
• Real man, doing bad: The author is spreading lies.
  

Re:Easy as Pi

[Odds]

Actually, Pi does have a decent representation of the life of some programmers. Sure, the computer was ridiculous and over the top - it was mostly there for atmosphere and visual effect.

But some of the psychology was right. I liked the scenes where he left the office and walked in crowds, and everywhere he looked, equations popped into his head; he couldn't stop thinking about his work. For me, that's what happens for 30 mins after finishing work - still contemplating the problem, still "in the zone", with ideas about the day's work coalescing in my head as I bike home. I often can't even hold a normal conversation for the next half hour.

Can I get paid for that time? Please?

- David

You're forgetting all the anime

[phel666]

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.

Re:scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he wasn't heavy enough to do that according to the head scientist lady. Ramon and Arthur did it.

Please don't ask me how I remember that.