In many different industry fields, common ideas and concepts are often shared. For example, a lot of the concepts involved in computer programming are used in movies. Some of these concepts become so cool when depicted in films that they even help us programmers better understand these concepts. Below is my list of the top 10 movies that have helped me understand certain programming concepts in one way or another.
1. The Matrix (1999)
Concepts: Online/Offline, Recursion, Loops, Matrix, etc.
This revolutionary film shows that the end of one civilization can be the beginning of another. It became a model for many subsequent films.
2.Looper (2012)
Concept: Loop
If life becomes an endless cycle, how do you break it?
3. Tron: Legacy (2010)
Concept: Virtual vs. Reality
Many computer scientists who grew up with computers will admit that their passion for computing or war games comes from a sense of aspiration.
4. Meet the Future (2007)
Concept: Recursion
This movie uses the concept of recursion found in computers, especially in the final search sequence, which performs a recursive search on a tree data structure.
5. Final Destination 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Concept: If-Else-Jump
6. Inception (2010)
Concepts: Virtual Machine, Nesting
Inception can be confusing to watch because there are so many nested dreams, and characters travel between them, making it hard for me to keep track of which dream layer they're in. However, there's a funny joke about this movie that programmers would find hilarious:
The main idea of Inception is: if you install a virtual machine inside a virtual machine inside a virtual machine inside another virtual machine, everything will run extremely slow.
7. Cloud Atlas (2012)
Concept: Parallelism
Seemingly unrelated storylines are actually interconnected, just like parallel computing where all processes work together to solve the same task and may share some variables.
8. Flatland 2: Sphereland (2012)
Concept: 2D
9. Source Code (2011)
Concept: Multithreading Reentrancy Mechanism
I’m curious about where these source codes are running. If the power is turned off, does the other world disappear?
10. Triangle (2009)
Concept: Infinite Loop
Above are some of my favorite movies. Of course, there are many more films related to software programming. If you suggest any in the comments, I’ll add them to this list.