>That was The Net wasn't it? Actually, I sort of thought the program was written in C for AFIS and I imagine it's pretty significant too. Finding all the loops, whorls, bifurcations, etc and assigning a value to them doesn't sound too easy to me.

No, not too easy but to see the points displayed on screen after the print is scanned is pretty impressive and then to get a hit and solve a crime is a bit rewarding.

Net? Maybe. As far as AFIS, what I experienced was massive optical storage platters and all the technical documents were written in japanese so I couldn't tell you what the core language was. This was a few years ago but I am constantly aware that one of the requirements of the job was to be fingerprinted and entered into the system. Sorta locks me out of a bunch of career opportunities (burglary, bank robbery....)