Asklemmy @lemmy.ml Reef @lemmy.ca 8 mo. ago

What good TV show was surprisingly accurate for your area of work?

I'm thinking of watching 'Halt and Catch Fire', but I'm also taking a hardware & OS course right now, and I was worried that it might teach me some wrong stuff. I might wait till after the final to watch it.

58 comments

"have you tried turning it off and on again"

already used the line once today and it's only 10am.

(yes. of course. it worked)
- The IT Crowd?
  
  Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
Mr. Robot for its hacking scenes. A bit dramatized but much better than the infamous CSI hacking screen.
- They may be dramatised but the Linux stuff he does by typing commands into the terminal is real.
  
  python fSociety.py
Silicon Valley. Yes a lot of stuff is exaggerated for comedic effect, but not nearly as much as an outsider would think.
- Silicon Valley was too accurate for comfort lol. I was working on my degree in Computer Engineering in San Jose, CA when I watched it. I moved to Wisconsin immediately after graduating
  
  Lmao, SJSU alumni checking in. Did you have as much trouble filing the graduation paperwork as I did?
Better Off Ted was always just a little too close to being an accurate portrayal of corporate life. Still one of my all-time favorite sitcoms.
- I was bummed it didn't get more seasons. It was great. The scientists were a perfect duo.
- Brilliant show.
- One of my favorites to watch right here. Love their commercials.
Mr robot for sure. Nobody haha the mainframe by fisting a keyboard. I don't think I caught one inaccurate thing.
- It’s also fairly accurate to the lived experience of having DID
  
  DID?
- I came also here to write Mr Robot.
  
  me three
  
  i think that's why the show gives me so much anxiety; it's too believable
I doubt you really need to worry about Halt and Catch Fire hurting your education. It’s a narrative show taking place in tech, not a step by step guide to building a bad OS.

Doctors watch Grey’s Anatomy, Cops watch Brooklyn 99, Chefs watch The Bear. I can’t imagine anything you take away from a show will outweigh the reality of you being in the domain day to day. The problem really only applies to careers you aren’t involved in.

That said, I’m in tech and Silicon Valley gets a lot of fun things right (while also being absurd and hyperbolic like any TV show)
- Doctors watch Grey's Anatomy for the fantasy, not because it's good medicine. Long, long ago when I paid attention, it was the general consensus that Grey's had a lousy grasp on medical reality. Remember the ghost sex arc? However, the show that I watched that doctors said was surprisingly accurate is Scrubs, a sitcom.
  
  Scrubs completely captured what it feels like to work in healthcare. It's the only medical TV show that I not only managed to finish but actually rewatch often.
  
  Scrubs is indeed the most accurate medical show, by far.
- Fair enough! I'm enjoying learning about the hardware stuff, so I was excited to watch HCS. I guess it's a hard course, which is where the mild worry came from 😄 I'll get started on watching it!
  
  I loved Silicon Valley, and I might give it a rewatch sometime to catch all the jokes I didn't quite understand
Parks & Recreation hits too close to home on dealing with the public.
Huh… never heard of that show but I’ll be watching it now.

Thanks.

As others have said, Silicon Valley and Mr Robot were pretty close for my area of work.
- Oh how I envy that you get to enjoy halt and catch fire for the first time :)
  
  I was actually sad when I finished it because I felt so connected to the main characters, didn't want the ride to end.
- It's really good. People seem to have missed it, it's a hidden gem.
  
  Much better than Mr Robot to me.
- Wow! I totally forgot I'd watched it when it was first airing. Great show - might have to rewatch and see if the wife likes it. Reminded me of the days when Digital ruled the data centre.
Halt and Catch Fire doesn't get into the nitty gritty enough to spoil whatever you're studying. It's a really entertaining look at that time period though. If you're gonna wait till after the final, wait because you really don't need this distraction.
- Halt and Catch Fire felt like my autobiography
Contagion was very accurate for pandemics IMO. They got a lot right.
- So upsettingly accurate.
Person of Interest did a lot of things right and was often prophetic in the things that were a fantasy.

It had a system that spies on people. A year later Snowden revealed the truth about PRISM.
The physics of the space scenes in the Expanse is mostly accurate, but I don't work there :(
- Not yet you don't
Veep is far and away the most accurate political show we’ve ever had
In Halt and Catch Fire one of the main characters uses the term "killer app" which I'm not sure is period correct for the early eighties. Always bugged the crap out of me.
- It was coined in the late 80s, but as far as "affronts to tech" that is a very minor offence compared to what shows normally pull
- I definitely remember hearing that term in the 90’s.
Severance. Pretty accurate to how we feel/are treated working for our corporate overlords. Minus the brain surgery (yet).
Not a TV show, but one of the Matrix movies (the 2nd IIRC) has Trinity use nmap and a well known exploit at the time to hack into a system.
I have yet to encounter time travel shenanigans.

Archive 81: Not accurate.
Scrubs is well known to be the only really accurate depiction of American hospitals. Mostly because it's the only show where nurses even exist.
- I'm going through residency right now and every day I experience a different episode from Scrubs. It's scary how accurate it can be, even for how long it's been since it came out
mythic quest
Don’t be ridiculous

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