Good movies not only take us on a rollercoaster ride of emotions or entertain us they a lot more than that — if we try to draw some inspiration from the story and characters and become open to the experience.

They inspire us, make us appeal to greater things, and strive higher to become who we want to be. And being a programmer, obviously needs creativity, productivity, and inspiration and what could be the fun way — other than movies — to get inspired rather than banging your head on books or on your console window.

With that being said, let’s dive straight into the top 10 best movies that every programmer should watch.

#1 The Social Network

Released in 2010 this movie is one of the favorite movies of programmers. Adapted from the book, The Accidental Billionaires, this movie revolves around the life of the social-networking website Facebook’s founders.

The movie also turned out to be a major critical and commercial success, that grossed $224 million on a $40 million budget and was widely acclaimed by critics.

The movie portrays the challenges faced by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg while building the world’s most popular and highly used social networking site “Facebook”.

Everyone should watch this movie as it shows a clear dedication to achieving one’s goals.

#2 Ex-Machina

Ex Machina is a 2014 British-American science fiction psychological thriller film that runs around an interesting plot of artificial intelligence and the fictional discovery of “strong AI”.

With breathtaking cinematography, the whole movie is about how the discovery of artificial intelligence can be used to help humankind to live a better life. It showcases the brilliance of software developers in creating beauty and meaning to the world around us while giving a caution of handling it properly.

#3 The Internship

The Internship is a 2013 American comedy film that highlights the story of two unemployed adults Billy and Nick who land an internship at Google.

The movie portrays the events where both of them get invited to Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View California to join the Google internship where they compete among the younger group of tech geniuses.

One of the most recommended movies for people who underestimate their talents based upon their age.

#4 The Matrix

The Matrix is one of the first best movies that highlights the idea of “hackers” in the mainstream.

It made such a big impact that a large number of youngsters of the time became interested in programming after watching it.

The story revolves around a computer programmer, Thomas Anderson, who is led to fight an underground war against powerful computers who have constructed his entire reality with a system called the Matrix.

The programming enthusiasts can definitely see that the concepts of recursion and loop are executed brilliantly in this movie.

#5 Source Code

Source code is a 2011 American science-fiction action thriller film directed by Duncan Jones and written by Ben Ripley.

It is a kind of movie that keeps you exciting throughout the run which is intellectually stimulating and connects you emotionally, as well.

The movie takes you to an interesting plot where an Army pilot Stevens finds himself in the body of an unknown man and soon he is on a mysterious trail to track down the bomber of the Chicago commuter train.

#6 The Imitation Game

Being one of the most engaging movies for programmers, the movie portrays the invention of the world’s first computer.

The Imitation Game is a 2014 American historical drama film that portrays the struggles of Alan Turing, a British mathematician, and his team which decodes the prominent German Enigma code and builds a machine to crack the codes.

#7 Jobs

Jobs is an American biographical drama film which was released in the year 2013 based on the life of Steve Jobs, the founder of the largest software company “Apple”.

The movie Jobs portrays important incidents Apple’s founder life right from his college to the finding of the Apple iPod. The whole movie is about how Apple became the business enterprise that it is today.

This is the most recommended movie for programmers, entrepreneurs, and Apple enthusiasts.

#8 Hackers

Being released at the time, in 1995, when the internet was not so popular, the movie showed seemed a mystery to many.

But today, this is one of the highly recommended for hackers and programmers.

The movie revolves around a high-school teenager Dade who along with his friends, discovers the plot of an evil genius to unleash a lethal virus.

#9 Tron

Released in 1982, Tron is a really interesting American science fiction action-adventure film.

The plot of Tron is really amazing to watch, especially for programmers as it portrays the story of Kevin, a software programmer, who got zapped into the virtual world where he pitted against malevolent software and find his way back into the normal world using his programming skills.

#10 Takedown

This 2000 movie portrays the story of an on the story of the capture of computer hacker Kevin Mitnick, which took the plot from the book ‘Takedown’ written by John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura.

A must-see movie for all programmers as it truly inspires you to challenge what you already know about programming.