Source code pops up on screens and in the background of television and movie scenes all the time, but one programmer finally paused a movie to figure out whether the code was accurate.
British programmer and writer John Graham-Cumming started a blog called Source Code in TV and Films on Jan. 3 after noticing that code used to reboot the futuristic space station in “Elysium” was actually taken from an instruction manual for Intel x86 processors.
After pointing out the screenshot on Twitter and receiving more than 500 retweets, Graham-Cumming created the blog and started posting code sightings from elsewhere. Submissions include Perl code in “The Social Network,” and that Tony Stark’s first suit in “Iron Man” was apparently running code from a 1998 programmable Lego brick.
Graham-Cumming is releasing one post a day, and in a blog post from Jan. 9 entitled “Gone Viral,” said he already has posts queued up for the next month, and that code from shows and films such as “Skyfall,” “Dexter” and “NCIS” are coming up.
Head over to Source Code in TV and Films to check out all the screenshots posted so far.
