Overflow Television Show

Many popular works of fiction, including books, movies, and TV shows, portray computer programmers, IT specialists, and hackers. The 2017 Developer Survey asked respondents about the accuracy of these portrayals, providing insights into the community’s opinions.

Text mining was used to analyze 10,983 responses to an open-ended question about fictional characters. Respondents chose from four categories: most realistic, least realistic, most inspiring, and most annoying.

Elliot Alderson from Mr. Robot was a frequent response for a realistic portrayal, alongside characters from Office Space and Silicon Valley. Categorizing individual words into character groups revealed the proportion of responses for each character.

Mr. Robot‘s protagonist dominated the most realistic and inspiring categories. Silicon Valley characters were deemed realistic and occasionally annoying. Stanley Jobson from Swordfish was considered both annoying and unrealistic. Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory was frequently labeled annoying and sometimes realistic.

Comparing responses across categories highlighted distinct preferences.

Characters from shows like CSI, NCIS, Arrow, and Criminal Minds, along with Hackers, were deemed least realistic. Office Space, Dilbert, and Halt and Catch Fire were considered most realistic.

Analyzing character choices relative to overall responses revealed further distinctions.

Kung Fury‘s Hackerman was among the least realistic, while Snow Crash‘s portrayal was considered highly inspiring. Examining gender differences in responses revealed preferences for characters of the same gender.

Women favored female characters like Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds and Lisbeth Salander. Men preferred male characters like Mark Zuckerberg, James Bond villains, and Tony Stark. This highlights the importance of representation in both fiction and reality. Mr. Robot resonates strongly with the developer community, offering a compelling, albeit potentially exaggerated, portrayal of a programmer. The survey reveals diverse opinions on the realism and inspiration offered by fictional characters in the Overflow Television Show landscape. The varied responses underscore the complexities and nuances of representing the tech world on screen.