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  "createdAt": "2025-11-23T16:22:22.674Z",
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        "alt": "THE SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE by Tracy Kidder\nlanguage instruction in the user program and to resume operations with the next instruction after that. This, finally, is how Eagle skips over one crossroad in a program and starts down another road.\nWest had said that designing a computer was \"a mind game.\" I asked Blau whether following an instruction around through the engine in the way that we had was the sort of mind game that they played when designing Eagle. \"You bet it is!\" he said. But they played hundreds of such mind games; and figuring out how to equip Eagle merely to WSEQ was itself much more intricate than Blau could fully explain in a single sitting.\nSuch games of logic, especially if they are played in a hurry - while flying upside down —can take a grip on an engineer's thoughts and hold on. After playing this way for a while, you look at a tree and, aha, it is clear that a tree is much like a computer; and a road with side streets is — what else? — a kind of computer program. Chuck Holland said that this unpleasant sensation, of being locked inside the machine, usually lingered three days — on the rare occasion when he got away from the basement for that\nlong.\nWest would sit at his desk and stare for hours at the team's drawings of the hardware, playing his own mind games with the results of the other engineers' mind games. Will this work? How much will this cost? Once, someone brought a crying baby past his door, and afterward it took him an hour to retrace his steps through the circuit design he had been pondering. Laughter outside often had the same effect, and once in a while it made his hands shake with rage — especially if he dida't like the design he'd been staring at.\nWest usually drove out of Westborough fast after work. \"I can't talk about the machine,\" he said one evening, bent forward over the steering wheel. \"I've gotta keep life and computers separate, or else I'm gonna go mad.\"",
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  "text": "\u003e \"I can't talk about the machine,\" he said one evening, bent forward over the steering wheel. \"I've gotta keep life and computers separate, or else I'm gonna go mad.\"\n\nMood."
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