There is a long abandoned (but it still runs) project called eDEX-UI (https://github.com/GitSquared/edex-ui) which basically provides a working, useable terminal surrounded by all sorts of the crap visual appearance of hacker terminals in the movies. Pair that with a terminal editor and you've almost got a movie IDE!
It's kinda fun for a while although I'd be amazed if anyone actually used it as their main terminal emulator program. But you could.
I could see it being a real thing. When you're making a game it gives you visualization for animations (both physics and visual-only) and shaders (maybe even a simplified stylized version). Random benchmark results/debug info. Drawing attention to syntax mistakes. An important email or video call pops up.
It would be cool and potentially useful, but completely un-asked for and likely distracting and a waste of space. Basically what if your computer was a non-cartoon clippy.
outside of the keyboard, you could defiantly make this into a viable terminal interface. just make sure all of the "widgets" are relevant information and its not a bad idea.
Can you imagine the eye strain one would get programming on a translucent screen every day? One where your always having to keep your eyes focused on semi transparent text and graphical interfaces in the foreground, and not the distracting and ever changing background, continuously shifting in parallax as you adjust your head and viewing angle. Not having my display buttressed up against a wall, or having to deal with glare and screen reflections, or even low contrast monitors in general are all things I find infuriating already.
But I guess the Sci-Fi future of ergonomics is holograms.
*You must have your migraines, and you must enjoy them.
Speaking of eye strain, there's the hilarious related trope that every helmet in a movie shines bright light into the face of the helmet's wearer.
It's pretty obvious why they do it: they want the faces of the actors to be visible. But, I can't help but imagine how stupid it would be to have a light shining in the eyes of an astronaut when they work on something in the darkness of space.
I’m surprised more people do not talk about this. Its easily the most annoying trope for me. Could you imagine hearing your machine beep through processing for 8-10 hours at a time each day? Its asinine to even consider anyone in these technology roles would deal with that.
I think this is because it is pretty boring to film a computer in action, because it does noting - it doesn't move for example. So beeping sounds were added for every action a computer would do: opening or closing windows, transferring files to a disk, calculating,...
These sounds were added at a time computers were not that common in every household and to emphazise that the computer is doing something. In recent movies, computers are more silent.
Another thing film makers did to show interaction with a computer is the constant usage of the keyboard. Every thing is done with the keyboard. Open a window: type 5 sceonds on the keyboard. Transferring a file onto a disk: type the whole bible on the keyboard. This was done because it would be pretty boring to show someone use the mouse or drag-and-drop files.
It its somehow compareable to the movie trope of constantly reloading a gun. You can see this often in older movies: the protagonist is going inside a building and he is reloading his gun. Then he stops a the corner of a hallway and is reloading the gun again - despite no shot has been fired. This was also done to show the audience that a gun will be involved.
Just don't look directly at it for too long or it'll cause a buffer overflow in your brain and you'll start yelling out your private keys instead of saying words.
I remember way back in uni at a hackathon, our table had a projector on it so of course we connected to it and set up Hacker Typer to auto play and keep typing out gibberish. But then some sponsor walked on by and stared, visibly impressed by what was happening. It wasn't until they asked for a picture that we realized they had never seen Hacker Typer before. And yes, we took the picture without telling them what it was.
Sometimes I think the ideas of the creators of movies and TV series like this is to try to see what's the most absurd and out of place thing they can push without anyone not in IT noticing. Moreover oftentimes the primary thing is entertainment, not factual accuracy.
There is an answer to the question that you are not asking, and it's the scene from NCIS where TWO people are furiously typing on ONE keyboard so that they can "hack faster"
The primary thing is entertainment. They have to make something that is entertaining to watch. For example even explosions are exaggerated. In movies they contain much more fire than they usually contain.
I've been playing around with Grafana alot lately so my screens do look closer to the second. Except not such a disordered jumble so it doesn't have any where near the same wow factor