[shadowgovt]

I often tell people that if they want to see a fun movie, see Hackers, but if they want to know what hacking is like, see Sneakers.

... though the all-nighter scene in Hackers where they just "flow" out some code while techno plays over the montage is also pretty accurate.

[alisonatwork]

I tend to describe Hackers as depicting what coding feels like on the inside.

All those great visuals, the pumping music, it captures the emotion of getting your teeth into a really gnarly problem, and the exuberance of eventually coming up with a solution. People watching over the shoulder of a developer at work are just going to see a bunch of scrolling text and tedious iterations of red, red, red, green, reload, alt-tab, change a thing, wait, red, red, red, green, and so on. But that workflow - if you dig the work - is enthralling. And when you solve the problem, it's worth throwing your hands up with glee, and (internally) belting out a cheesy action hero oneliner.

Not to mention when you are real-time dealing with attackers trying to compromise your systems, the chaos and exasperation and desperate attempts to block them very much match the climactic scene of The Plague and his hapless techno weenies typing "cookie".

I'm probably biased because of my age and the time in my career when I first watched the movie (around the same time as my first job) but to me it still feels like the most authentic silver screen portrayal of what I do. More modern shows often capture the cold, hard reality of the work better, which admittedly is just a bunch of text scrolling on a screen. And there are definitely works that better satirize the office culture, like Office Space and Silicon Valley. But there still hasn't been much that captured the excitement of the time, and can really explain to people outside of the industry why at least a certain subset of 1990s teenagers felt compelled to get into this apparently boring and nerdy career.

I suppose it's very "of its time", because nowadays everyone understands why kids want to get into IT - it's one of the most flexible and lucrative careers there is.

[linsomniac]

Very much agree, many people I've talked to about Hackers don't seem to get this "it shows what it feels like", and get hung up on interpreting details literally, like the favorite complaint "screens don't project a sharp image onto the wall behind you".

I also like Swordfish for this. Him dancing at the keyboard while programming is very much what it feels like when you have a good hack going.

[ryandrake]

I suppose it all depends on when you grew up and got into computers. I always thought Hackers feeling/vibe was kind of clowny and not representative of computer enthusiasts and hackers. The hackers I grew up exposed to (mid-80s, early-90s) were not cool kids riding rollerblades with wacky hairstyles saying "duuuuuude" and listening to techno. Wargames and Sneakers were a lot closer to the actual vibe. Normal clothes, quiet, careful and a little paranoid, typing into monochrome terminals, and so on. Maybe the scene changed later, but it just seemed like Hackers was too focused on coolifying and popularizing an activity that wasn't really cool or popular.

[alisonatwork]

I do suspect that the scene changed by the mid-90s. Although, it might also be that the American scene was a bit different from the European scene? It's worth mentioning that the movie Hackers was made by a Brit, and perhaps his vision was more influenced by the European scene at the time, despite the movie being based in NYC?

I came of age during the height of the demo scene in Europe, and enjoyed the pre-warez offshoot where pirated games always included exciting intros/cracktros. So hackers making electronic music and cool visuals was the baseline that every noob had to meet to be "elite". Of course in real life we still all wore "normal clothes" and lived careful, quiet lives - but the dream was to be these rockstars that the movie Hackers turned to 11.

[linsomniac]

For reference, I grew up and got into computers in the mid-80s. Yes, Sneakers and War Games was much more like what my reality was, though even more boring and low key. But, I'm still going to go with Hackers being much more like what I felt like inside. :-)

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

[sophacles]

I literally dance at my stand-up desk when I'm deep in some gnarly code. My co-workers make fun of me for it, but also, when I stop dancing they ask me what I figured out.

[kstrauser]

The scene where Zero Cool's hacking the TV station, and the LED clock is ticking off minutes every few seconds, is the best and most accurate illustration of "flow" I've ever witnessed.

[sophacles]

> I tend to describe Hackers as depicting what coding feels like on the inside.

I'm going to borrow this, it will make many future discussions much shorter than with my current approach of floundering around this sentiment.