Hey look, it’s an actor looking at some computer code in a movie. He must be really smart! He must be a computer hacker! He must be able to take over the world with just his keyboard! Not quite. The code used in movies is usually nothing but some mumbo jumbo on WordPress or Wikipedia. No, seriously. That image above showing The Doctor looking at code is a SVG file of a light wave taken from Wikipedia.
It’s great. John Graham-Cumming is collecting screen shots of computer code from movies and TV shows on the tumblr Movie Code and explaining what the actors are really looking at. Just because it’s filled with symbols and indentations doesn’t mean it’s that technical (even if code is always technical).
Below is scenes from Terminator (he’s looking at 6502 assembly language of an Apple II) and Elysium (code that is taken from Intel Architecture Software Developer’s Manual Volume 3: System Development). Hilarious. You can see more code in movies here.