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Why do you think I throw myself into emulation so much, and emulator coding? You can get pissed off at an emulator, get pissed off at what you're writing because it is not working correctly, but there is an unemotional truth to it, there is an objectiveness about it that you do not get with people. If you're pissed at your code, you at least know that it is because of something you did, and only something that you did. There is a straightforwardness to it. Insert Tab A into Slot B: "Am I contributing code to this project that nobody else seemed to be interested in doing?" "Am I preserving hardware functionality for the future?" If yes, continue. If no, stop.

You know that the emulator and the code don't have an emotional investment in how much or how little time you spend with it, it doesn't have a mind in which it can do its own opaque thing and scheme with notepad.exe to take out your bookmarks; lacking malice by other contributors to the code, the code itself cannot be malicious. It can't lie to you, it can't ignore you, it can just be there for you, no matter how many people screw you over, no matter how many people break your heart, no matter how many friends abandon you, no matter how many jobs you lose, that code will be waiting for you there to work on.

Because if nobody else seems interested in keeping company with you, or a friendship with you, or something that lasts after you're gone, at least the code will.

it's tendency to always 'be there' could also be said about my right shoe.

Swing and a miss. Will your shoe still be here in 100 years, still bearing the changes you made to it while you were alive? No, probably not. I would certainly not choose a shoe to be my legacy when I can contribute code to something that will hopefully be around in some form or other well after I'm not.