Steve Lohr on Ken Thompson in his book “Go To”:

He has called programming an addiction of sorts, and it was in the Berkeley computer center that he got hooked. Sitting in the Bell Labs offices years later, he described the appeal as having all the craftsman’s satisfactions of making things, without the cost and trouble of procuring all the materials. “It’s like building something where you don’t have to order the cement,” Thompson said. “You create a world of your own, your own environment, and you never leave this room.”

This is exactly how I felt when I stopped building physical things and learned to program. Now if I only had 1% of Ken’s ability.