He pushed away his plate. By now the water for this night's dinner had boiled, the past had cooked, been drained, and Ethan was sitting behind a plate of pasta with sauce from a jar, but his appetite was gone. He wanted to give up on this remembering thing. It was useless, disorienting. What he wanted was to find that clarity again, the astringent pleasure of the time after Joanna had left, when he was alone with his books and manuals, and he didn't think about her at all.
Because that's what happened while she was away: he forgot her. He was working on the most interesting project of his life, doing significant work, nontrivial work. A programmer can write code for years and never be involved in a project of lasting value. Ethan's work before going to Telligentsia was a compendium if disappointments: projects canceled when a vice president was fired, when a hardware manufacturer changed its pricing structure, when a company was bought by a bigger one. Telligentsia was his chance to build something that might be used for years —decades! Who could blame him for sequestering himself with books and manuals?
(Ullman: p. 302)
Haha! Pasta? Sauce from a jar? Ramen noodles anyone? Man, that sounds familiar! No wonder there are so many people who believe that geeks are almost autistic. But then, we can also find this high level of commitment and concentration in other fields. It's quite normal among artists, for instance, who are quite often accused of being egotistical. Perhaps there is a connection between the two activities after all. Perhaps the programmer is nothing but an artist who gives shape to the most important medium of our time: bits.
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