Hacker Cinema
Rad
1986 · Film · 93 min
Directed by Hal Needham
A BMX racer, who lives in a small town with his mother and sister, is faced with a tough decision, qualify for Helltrack or take his SATs in order to attend college.
1 positivefrom 1 commenter
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
7 comments on Hacker News
I have a handful of "regulars" that I watch repeatedly. Most of them are at the point now that I've seen them so many times that they can work as "background noise" when I'm coding or doing something else. IOW, I can turn the volume down fairly low and it serves a purpose, but I'm so familiar with the story already that I'm not likely to get drawn into actually paying attention to the movie (as opposed to whatever I'm working on) unless I'm at a point where I need a break anyway.
Some of the ones that are on that list for me:
The Matrix
The Matrix Resurrections
The Social Network
Inception
Sneakers
Hackers
Antitrust
Rad
Tron: Legacy
Vision Quest
Rocky (really the entire Rocky franchise)
The Karate Kid
Kickboxer
Bloodsport
Hard To Kill
Above The Law
Since we're talking movies, I'll throw in a handful of movie titles that I find inspirational and /or uplifting as well:
Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky Balboa
Vision Quest
Tin Cup
The Pursuit of Happyness
The Social Network
Rad
Hackers
Wargames
Iron Man
The Man Who Knew Infinity - based on the book of the same name, which I also recommend.
I was interviewing for a job recently, and I got asked what got me into coding. It’s not the first time I got asked that same question, and it’s one of my favorites. I love to see the person’s reaction who asks me the question when I tell them the answer.
For me there wasn't one single "thing" that got me interested in coding, but there's no doubt that the book The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder played a key role.
It’s the movie Hackers from 1995! I’m not joking. That’s the movie that made me fall in love with computers, coding, and hacking. Many people consider it cheesy, but I don’t care. I watched it probably twenty times, if not more. I watch it any time I find myself feeling down and unmotivated. It reminds me of those first days, that initial spark. Just like you would reminisce about a beautiful beginning of a past love affair when you feel lonely and unloved.
Yes, "Hackers" is cheesy as hell, but it's simultaneously a great movie in a certain sense. Like the author of TFA, I consider it one of my "comfort movies". I've probably watched it 20+ times, and can always default to watching that when I'm feeling down, strung-out, overwhelmed, etc. Doing so always puts me in a better mood. A few other movies that fall into the same category for me include "Antitrust", "The Matrix", "The Social Network", "War Games", "Tron: Legacy", "Rad", and maybe one or two others.
It depends on what I'm doing. If I'm reading/studying and trying to mostly absorb material, I usually listen to either synthwave (and related: darkwave, horrowave, retrowave, whatever you want to call it), or classical.
If I'm writing code or doing something active like that, the above applies, but add heavy metal to the list of things I might be listening to. But if I'm listening to metal it's almost always only bands and songs that I'm extremely familiar with (eg, have listened to a given song hundreds or thousands of times in my life) as those are less likely to be distracting to me, as opposed to something new where I feel obligated to really pay attention to the music.
One other option is I will sometimes put on a movie that I've watched many, many, many times (eg, The Matrix, Hackers, Antitrust, Tron:Legacy, The Social Network, Rad, Vision Quest, etc) minimize the viewer window and just have the audio in my headphones.
Very rarely I might go with some sort of basically "white noise" track like
"Howling snowstorm and crackling fire" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=volQGswo3dg
"Cyberpunk city sounds" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5zX1eRKEDM&
"Twin Peaks Double R Diner" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npVellnR6D8
"Coffee shop" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMAPTo7RVCo (unless I'm actually sitting in a real-life coffee shop, which I quite often am)
etc.
Sometimes I listen to metal (my default favorite genre) and sometimes I prefer various forms of electronic music: techno, house, trance, EDM, etc. Other times I go with classical: Dvorak, Wagner, Bach, Fauré, Handel, Vivaldi, Philip Glass, Carl Orff, etc.
But a lot of times what I actually prefer is to put on a movie, one that I've seen like 100 times, so that I know it so well that I don't really get drawn into the story and lose focus. I'll turn the volume down moderately low, enough to be audible but not overly distracting, and play The Matrix, Hackers, Antitrust, Sneakers, War Games, Tron:Legacy, Rad, The Social Network, Inception, or something like that and let that serve as my background noise.
I can tell you how I do it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend my path to anyone else. I'm not even 100% sure I'd recommend it to a younger version of myself, although I'm also not sure I'd recommend against it either.
Basically, I'm single and childless, and darn close to my every free minute goes into the startup project. When I was working full-time, that meant "after work" M-F and the majority of my Sat and Sun. hours. I make an exception during football season to watch the Dolphins game on Sunday (yeah, yeah, go ahead, say it... I'm a glutton for punishment).
I force myself to take a break every once in a while and read a novel or watch a movie or something... but truth be told, lately, even when I watch movies or something, there's an angle related to the startup. For example, I've been reading and studying a lot about sales lately, and I've seen more than one sales book mention "be like Columbo".
I had kinda wanted to rewatch some old Columbo episodes anyway (yeah, I'm old, deal with it) so I've been watching Columbo and thinking about "how do you apply his attitude / approach to this 'diagnostic business development' thing"? And the movies I make time for tend to be ones that I find inspirational (Rocky, The Karate Kid, Rad, etc.) that help keep me motivated.
About 6 months ago, I dropped down from full-time status to part-time status at my regular job to free up more time for the startup. I had a little bit of money saved, but not enough to quit outright... luckily the owner of the company was willing to be flexible and let me do that. I've pretty much burned through my savings though, and we aren't profitable yet, so I'm going back to working full-time next month.
These days I forgo most social activities like dating, parties, and most non-technical social events. I rarely mountain bike anymore, and almost never set foot in the gym. I bailed on going home to see my parents for Christmas so I could use those few days of "down time" as recovery time. I stay amped up on more caffeine than could possibly be healthy, and do everything I can to the tune of heavy-metal[1] or hard-rock of some sort. My mantra right now is "Caffeine, heavy-metal and adrenaline". \m/
I know, I know... you're thinking "dude, you must be miserable". Nah... I enjoy this in a certain sense, and since I'm 40 now, and haven't achieved anything yet, my mindset now is to say "fuck it" and go for broke. It's now or never, ya know? My mindset is to achieve the biggest and most ambitious of my dreams, or - when life finally breaks me - pull a Leaving Las Vegas deal and go to Vegas and try to drink myself to death.
Do not try this at home...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQcOQsCFnw
One of my favorites is this one from The Social Network:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC5wVJrhzl0
Another is the scene in The Fighter where Micky Ward is talking to his girlfriend and there's the "I'm tired of being a fucking disappointment, I told everybody I was gonna win that fight and get back on track, blah, blah" bit.
And plenty of scenes from the Rocky movies, Vision Quest, Rad, The Karate Kid, and a few others...