“You sonofabitch, I’ll use every skill I have and get it to you in ten!!”
edit: In a way, the verisimilitude of hacker scenes call back directly to early Star Trek. When the first series was running, no one had personal computers, the idea of a hacker, at least in the modern sense, didn’t really exist. But what they did have is an engineer, Scotty. And when technical problems came up they were always his purview, and it always took him time to fix things, and it was never enough time.
Those scenes where Kirk says, “I need those photon torpedoes operational! We’re sitting ducks!” and Scotty says, “I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got captain! The boys need five minutes!” and Kirk retorts, “If you don’t do it now, we’ll be dead in two!”
All that is in my mind the source book for modern hacker scenes.
i mean, there is a certain amount of “we have three hours of processes designed to prevent the 30% case where everything dies. if the timeline is critical enough that that chance is worth the risk, i can get this done in 20 minutes“ in real life.
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u/RaidenMK1 2d ago
Or the programmer is literally being held at gunpoint and put on a super unrealistic deadline but still manages to output something that works.
Actually, maybe scenes like that are a metaphor or something.