I would like to know what are some recommended movies on history of computers and programming. Thanks.
Wargames [1]
While it's probably not completely accurate, it does show a lot of older computer technology, and is actually interesting to watch.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/Revolution OS is awesome: http://www.revolution-os.com/
It's got tons of interviews with key players in Linux history.
Robert X. Cringely did a PBS series entitled "Triumph of the Nerds: How the Personal Computer Changed the World," that I liked. You can get it on DVD [1].
[1] http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1978852
Freedom Downtime
[1]
The Code (2001 film)
[2]
In the Realm of the Hackers
[3]
Microprocessor Chronicles
[4]
and I've always liked Sneakers [5] and Cypher [6], but they fall in a completely different category then the above ones.
--
Cosmo: There I was in prison. And one day I help a couple of older gentlemen make some free telephone calls. They turn out to be, let us say, good family men.
Martin Bishop: Organized crime?
Cosmo: Hah. Don't kid yourself. It's not that organized.
The technology is incidental, but Office Space [1] deserves a mention for doing such a fantastic job of capturing everything bad about working in IT.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/Code Rush [1] (documentary about Netscape)
The Machine That Changed the World [2] (history of computers)
Enigma [3] This one is actually kind of a stretch, it's really more of a spy/love story set at Bletchley Park during WWII. An early computer and cryptanalysis form the background to the story.
[1] http://clickmovement.org/coderushA fun movie to watch along these lines is the Tracy and Hepburn movie "Desk Set" [1]. It's about office politics getting shaken up by a company's purchase of an "electronic brain". In this 1957 film they didn't even use the word "computer"!
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050307/Terminator 2 - it's a very graphic explanation of why you shouldn't write shoddy unit tests.
The KGB, the Computer and Me [1] is an interesting drama based on actual event
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308449/Hacking Democracy [1] - document about bugs in computer vote counting software in US.
[1] http://www.hackingdemocracy.com/Hackers
...wait...what? That's not true? But...but...The Gibson!
First of all I think this is a nice question!
My primary resource for "movies" is youtube. Just type in the subject and you get al list of presentations and lectures, in a lot of them they start of by giving some history of the subject they handle...
Sticking to the historical request ... The KGB, the Computer, and Me [1] is a pretty good NOVA [2] ( PBS [3]) documentary taken from Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg [4]. The documentary doesn't seem to currently be available from the PBS site or it's Amazon page [5], but maybe you can find it other ways.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/listseason/17.html#1710Lawnmower man. It's a documentary you know.
The Matrix... not the second two though and definitely not the last one.
You want "history" or "movie"
I think TRON is the "prime" example, where the Users were God's
Weird Science ;)