Emacs appearances in pop culture

Post by teddyh » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #17

dhosek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great onscreen code moments was in Superman III ¹ where Richard Pryors’ character has written some “impossible” program and when the listing is shown on screen it’s pretty much five screens of BASIC REM statements. ⸻ 1. A movie which exists primarily to set up a joke in Office Space .

5 CLS 10 PRINT "PLOT BILATERAL CO-ORDINATES" 15 PRINT : PRINT 20 GOSUB 5000 25 PRINT "INPUT CO-ORDINATE X : " 31 PRINT "4"; 33 PRINT "2"; 35 PRINT "Y" : PRINT 40 PRINT "INPUT CO-ORDINATE Y : " 41 IF INKEY$ = "" THEN 41 : IF 42 PRINT "Z"; 43 IF INKEY$ = "" THEN 43 : IF 44 PRINT "+"; 45 IF INKEY$ = "" THEN 45 : IF 46 PRINT "X" 47 GOSUB 5000 50 CLS 60 PRINT "0010 N = RND(900)" 70 PRINT "0020 Z = 1 TO N" 80 PRINT "0030 X…

Note: everything beyond the 30th column is derived from the observed output of the program (which is also shown in the movie), but not everything can be deduced exactly. Specifically, lines 41, 43, and 45 are very likely incomplete.

The program listing ends with line 350, but this is incomplete; the program must has more lines than those shown in the movie. The missing lines have a known functionality, and, infering them from their observed functionality, they could be something like this:

  360 PRINT
  370 CLS
  372 PRINT 
  374 PRINT 
  376 PRINT 
  378 PRINT 
  380 PRINT 
  382 PRINT 
  384 PRINT 
  386 PRINT 
  388 PRINT 
  390 PRINT "CO-ORDINATES ACCEPTED"
  391 PRINT 
  392 PRINT "PROGRAMME RUNNING"
  395 GOTO 395

These specific line numbers are merely guesses, except the line number 395, which is known to be the end point, since that is the line number where the program is interrupted.

The listing is also missing line 5000, referenced on lines 20 and 47. I am guessing it may have been a subroutine to play an audible beep.

Re: Emacs appearances in pop culture

Re: Emacs appearances in pop culture