Most men employed as programmers lack that obsession too. HN has lots of people that have loved computers their whole lives, and tech entrepreneurs and compani

Most men employed as programmers lack that obsession too. HN has lots of people that have loved computers their whole lives, and tech entrepreneurs and companies like Google, Facebook, old-school MSFT are probably loaded with these obsessives, but there are tens of millions of professional programmers out there worldwide. Most of them chose programming as a job because it passed the cost/benefit test vs other fields. That's why so many Indians (male and female) work as programmers - IT outsourcing jobs in India pay quadruple a normal wage and are more prestigious. In the US, programmers get good but not mind-boggling wage and have very little prestige outside of SV, Seattle, Boston and Austin.