Creators Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers wrote the pilot mainly hoping to use it as a sample script to land entry-level TV writing jobs, but instead sold the series itself to AMC, marking their first jobs in the television industry.

The show was inspired by Cantwell's childhood in the Dallas–Fort Worth area's 'Silicon Prairie,' where his father worked as a software salesman; the creators later researched how Texan tech firms competed alongside Silicon Valley in the 1980s PC boom.

Actors considered for Joe MacMillan included David Harbour, Ryan Phillippe, and Wes Bentley, while the role of Cameron took the longest to cast, with Dakota Johnson and Brie Larson both auditioning before Mackenzie Davis won the part after her screen test.

Karen Gillan was considered for the role of Donna Clark, which ultimately went to Kerry Bishé, who reunited with co-star Scoot McNairy after the two had played a married couple in the film Argo the year before.

The character names and backstory of Gordon and Donna Clark were a deliberate reference to Gary and Dorothy Kildall, the real-life couple behind Digital Research, whose CP/M operating system was displaced by IBM's adoption of DOS.

Ahead of season four, AMC gave Mackenzie Davis and Kerry Bishé unsolicited pay raises to match co-stars Lee Pace and Scoot McNairy, addressing a gender pay gap that had persisted even as their characters gained more screen time.

For season three, Lee Pace, Mackenzie Davis, and Scoot McNairy lived together in a rented house in Atlanta to build camaraderie, with Toby Huss joining them for the show's fourth and final season.

Because the actors had no formal table reads due to the production schedule, the cast organized their own dinners at Lee Pace's house on weekends to cook, drink wine, and discuss their characters and scripts.

The production hired technical advisors, including IBM/Sun Microsystems veteran Carl Ledbetter, who wrote sample on-screen code, operated props like a breadboard and dot matrix printer from under the set, and fed his own real-life industry anecdotes into the scripts.

For a one-day shoot in Dallas, AMC paid to restore a 50-foot-tall neon Big Tex sign at a former liquor store location to help capture the period setting.

The fourth season's opening sequence, depicting a three-year time jump edited to look like a single continuous shot, was conceived by pilot director Juan José Campanella and filmed over two days with multiple hairstyle and wardrobe changes for the actors.

The series finale's closing diner scene between Donna and Cameron was filmed at the Waffle House Museum, with each camera shot deliberately composed to show an analog object that would later have a digital equivalent.