Unpopular opinion: the show was kinda cool. Not because it's very realistic, but because it had really good writing. Well except for the computer science, but that much is obvious.
I remember reading somewhere that TV show writers/producers are well aware of this and it’s kind of a sport to get the most ridiculous hacking scene in.
Real hacking would be kind of boring to show, it would just be a guy staring at a screen for hours on end and occasionally typing something.
Well except for the computer science, but that much is obvious.
And that's never good. But as a computer scientist, I am of the opinion that the real thing is rarely as compelling as The Imitation Game, and even that was about people more than math/science. I'm on board with writers having fun with this stuff because it sort of challenges us to do better out in the world.
For instance, Hackers was not a wildly-off-target take on what computing was like. Rather it's what we wanted computing to look like.