Devs on screen

Silicon Valley. © HBO.

The depiction of developers, nerds and hackers on TV and in the movies is way off the mark and sometimes downright caricatural. So Stack Overflow asked: has no-one ever depicted a true-to-life developer on screen? More than 350 developers weighed in. The TV series that got the most votes (40%) for the depiction that best dodges the usual stereotypes is Silicon Valley, produced by HBO. It’s about the trials and tribulations of Richard Hendricks, a Silicon Valley engineer who tries to start a company called Pied Piper. This satirical comedy was partly based on co-creator Mike Judge’s experience as a software engineer in the 1980s, which explains why it rings so true. Runner-ups are the dark drama Mr. Robot (15%) and British sitcom The IT Crowd (14%).

As far as feature films go, The Social Network, David Fincher’s movie with Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, sweeps the category with 40% of votes. Trailing behind are The Matrix (6%), Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s cult classic with Keanu Reeves in the role of hacker Neo, and Hackers (4%) by Iain Softley, which was a commercial flop when it came out in 1995 but is now considered an overlooked cinematic gem of the 90s.

⇨ Stack Overflow Blog, David Gibson, “New data: Top movies and coding music according to developers.”

2022-03-24