Program Computer Games? No, Programming IS The Game

I don't know why it took me so long, but I finally am reading Rudy Rucker's Software Engineering and Computer Games . I am a huge fan of his science fiction and math theory books and always knew he was a computer science professor, but just now am I reading his book, which I am loving already.  Interestingly, the introduction actually has one of the most well articulated pro-Microsoft sentiments (of both Microsoft and Visual Studio) that I've seen in a long time, which he must do as a professor, where at the university Linux and Java are so entrenched.

But more interesting to me than the introduction was this quote:

  "Many programmers have at some point in their lives been obsessed with computer games.  Programming itself is the 'big game', the meta-game, a game made more enticing by the fact that the points you score can be real-world fame and fortune.  Programming has a lot of the elements of gaming at its best.  Why settle for gaming when you can program?

"Of course when you're programming you need something to program about..."