Watching the movie WarGames, reminded me why I loved “playing” on computers early on in life.  I never thought I would be David Lightman, but I certainly pretended to be on my old Compaq, writing BASIC programs and “hacking” Microsoft Flight Simulator.  It got me thinking how many of today’s programmers, developers and hackers were inspired by the film?

Here are my 3 favorite scenes:

• When David goes to the university to get help in accessing the game system.  Programmers have come a long way from the stereotype they showed in that scene.
• When David and Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) show up at Professor Falken’s house and he gives them instructions to leave, he does so in logic. “find path, take path, find gate, open gate, close gate…”
• The scene where David makes flight reservations on PanAm.  It gaves us all hope that one day we could book our own travel plans online.  Of course a few minutes later the most famous scene of the movie takes place when the computer asks David, “Do you want to play a game?”

No movie about computers and hacking has come close to this one.  Now there are rumors that Leonardo DiCaprio is going to reboot WarGames and redo the movie.  For me the original was so good, why mess with a good thing.