I think what makes it so appealing is that it isn't just an action movie with lots of keyboard action. It's actually about hackers and their subculture. The her

I think what makes it so appealing is that it isn't just an action movie with lots of keyboard action. It's actually about hackers and their subculture. The heroes enjoy understanding new things, share books on BSD and compilers, have an annoying wannabe that they nurture, value merit over superficial traits, and have a low tolerance for artifice. It's as if they came out of a jargon file hacker template. When I said that this movie is more or less a Carmack movie, it's because of how teenage Carmack is described. He's arrogant, but not so much he'd surround himself with idiots. When he meets other smart programmers at Al's company, he's elated. So yeah, it is cheesy, but it does more justice to the hacker subculture than anything else I've seen. It certainly has more to do with actual hackers than hacker news does.