Is it a meme in the programming world? I've only encountered it in Hollywood and TV. It's like how every on-screen computer beeps and boops on every interaction: it's a dramatic device. No one does that IRL because it would drive you bananas in like ten seconds.
Yeah, I've had a few CS friends and internet people say things like that, like there is probably some programmer who solved the NP problem but no one knows it and of course there's the elite hacker who can do anything he wants thing; not really seriously but enough that it seems to be a meme in the CS world.
Cf. Glyph's "The Television Writer's Guide to Cryptography" https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/01/television-writer-gu...