He could have become a mathematician. He knew he had some skill there. Math would have been a much better choice for an ugly man who was shy and retiring. It was only personal weakness that had made him give in to the lure of computers. They called it "software engineering," but that wasn’t engineering, either. If he’d been a true engineer like his grandfather, he would never have gone to the Space Force with such a cheap, lousy hack. He had brought them a half-baked notion. A hack was something rough-and-ready, tacked onto the end of a legacy system that was too huge, complicated, and overwhelming to fix. That was why he’d failed and been kicked out in disgrace.