[pengaru]

I'd argue that he was already catching a glimpse of the engineer trap that is a machine you can spend all your time playing with "engineering" in plain sight because there's no physical waste byproduct for everyone to see is clearly happening.

What amount of "software engineering" actually ship in products that see the light of day? How many "real job" programs have been written that were executed in production for longer than it took to implement them?

There's an endless mountain of wasted "work" in this field. The computer provides this infinite engineering puzzle and IMNSHO it largely serves as a huge mental effort sink depriving the rest of society of bright minds that could be doing something far more productive.

Software folks are regularly burning endless hours on effort to make something nobody knows ever existed six months later.

How many major projects has Google alone funded development of then terminated?