A convincing performance requisites an elaborate stage, for it distracts the audience from realizing your lack of depth. In movies, software is written by stacking 3D blocks on top of each other, or by fondling some holograms. Of course, this is fantasy. In real life, the closest you can come to it is by using a combination of three aged technologies, all invented decades ago.

First, you have vim, a highly configurable text editor so hard to use millions of developers have been inadvertently trapped in its claws, unable to figure out how to close the damn thing. The mere fact that you have the audacity to use it elevates your status among your colleagues. You seem downright mythical, illuminating others about subjects as historical as the holy Editor war and stirring up support for your crusade against the Church of Emacs.

Second, there’s tmux, a tool allowing you to open multiple panes within a single terminal window. This means you can write code in one pane, run terminal commands in another, and have completely useless plugins — like an audio spectrogram and an oversized clock — open in the remaining. In general, you want as many panes open as possible, overwhelming the spectator’s senses with the obtrusive spectacle. I myself make a point of never closing a pane, for unfunctional code doesn’t age.

To give you an example, here’s a snapshot of my screen while I’m generating some deepfakes:

Spectrogram credit: M.O.P. — Ante Up