Vonnegut said a couple of things struck a chord with me:

"Novelists are famous as being lousy mates, whether males or females, and one reason is that they have to concentrate all the time or they’ll lose the thread of the novel. It’s all in the head, and they have information pouring in from the outside they’re going to lose and so they will pretend to hear you, but they’re really some- where else."

Later on he says...

"It’s nowhere else and so they don’t want to lose it and if you interrupt a novelist it’s a disaster for him."

Maybe software developers and novelists have some inner workings in common!

I think very much so. Certainly not your work-a-day Jirs-story muncher, but when you hole away building a new concept that turns into a commitment you emerge a year later having lived and breathed that software for 12-16 hours a day you understand what it's like. When you take breaks it's to do some creative thinking. You never really stop but to eat, sleep, and... drink.

More amazing is how Caro paints the picture that really proves the point.

LBJ was a despicable human being in many ways. But, he truly believed in civil rights and making life better for ordinary people. Caro captures the toil of the hill country farm wife and the oppression of Mexican-Texans — and what Johnson did for them — vividly.

Moses was almost the opposite. He built an idealist vision in the 1920s… and never evolved. As his power peaked, he did not understand why people were against him after what he had done for “the people”.