Five lies the movies told you about software development projects

At the back of our minds we all know we can't trust what we see on the silver screen — most movies offer up a stylised, romanticised, shorthand version of what real life is like — but the exaggeration and simplification applied by screenwriters is particularly noticeable when it comes to software development. What you see in the cinema is often a long way from what actually happens when coders get down to work, as these examples prove.

1. Coding is done by individual geniuses, working alone in dark rooms: the quintessential on-screen hacker is huddled in a gloomy basement in front of a bank of glowing monitors, typing frenetically. One of the best examples of recent times is Neo in The Matrix (played by Keanu Reeves), but the reality is that normal programmers are far less mercurial, operate in teams, and sit in well-lit, airy rooms. Not only is this myth untrue, it can be a negative influence on those coders who think they have to live up to it.

2. What a piece of code does and is for will become instantly apparent the moment a programmer looks at it: if you've ever seen Jurassic Park, you'll know one of the tech-savvy kids instantly recognises a UNIX system when trying to get the park back under control without so much as a reference to a user manual. The reality is more like this Abstruse Goose cartoon: trying to plough through and make sense of code written by someone else is hardly ever a smooth or enjoyable process for programmers.

3. Programmers are always guys: the software development community is a lot more diverse than Hollywood would have you believe, and female coders are working hard to try and change perceptions of the gender distribution within the industry. No, programmers aren't always guys: and in the interests of balance we should tip our hat to GoldenEye, the 17th James Bond film, which prominently features a female coder played by Izabella Scorupco.

4. Software can be installed and run flawlessly on any computer simply by inserting a USB stick or disk for a few seconds: you'll see this in all kinds of movies, and it's become a movie convention that viruses or data harvesting apps can be up and running in just a few seconds. To be fair to the filmmakers, showing someone grappling with cross-platform development doesn't make for a particularly compelling series of scenes, but just be aware that the reality is very different — and usually a lot more complicated.

5. Programming is mostly typing: we've already mentioned the tendency for coders to be shown bashing away at high speeds on a keyboard, but a lot of software development involves thinking and planning, not actual typing. The movie Swordfish features some particularly humorous typing sequences which seem to magically produce a series of moving cubes on the computer display. See number four in Macleod Sawyer's very accurate list of truths that computer programmers know that most people don't.

As we've already alluded to, movie directors can't be expected to put a brutally honest depiction of coding up on screen — there aren't many people who would buy tickets to see that — but take what you see in films with a pinch of salt. Software developers are just normal people, with a profession that's a lot like many others.