don quixote
An impoverished student goes insane from reading too many programming language books and decides to become a software engineer. Arming himself with a rusty old computer retrieved from his barn and riding a decrepit GM car, he renames himself 'the best software engineer ever (platform indipendent)' and sets out in search of bugs to fix.
Yeah, Don Quixote is an amazing book. I assume you got the connection with the character. Don Quixote is the symbol of madness. Some have said that the definition of madness is the ability to hold two irreconcilable views in one’s mind at the same time. Don Quixote you are my hero!
Now that I read the book (actually I'm still reading it), I see Don Quixote every day, almost everywhere. Different ages have tended to read different things into the novel. What I read now, it's a window into our world.
Don Quixote represents the cool people: his insanity is a form of higher winsdom; in his madness he sees humble people as noble and elevated and challenges the rich and the powerful (a 16th-century Robin Hood?), often calling them monsters and villains; church is often the his target (and man, ops knight, here you really got it right).
Don Quixote represents the bad people: he is blind to the contradictions in his own approach to the correction of the evils of the world; he fights fire with fire and finds himself repeatedly defeated. War with war, violence with violence, you got it right one more time.
And the windmills. The perfect metaphor of our ability to generate pointless problems. The bugs to fix every day. Like Don Quixote, I will keep riding my old car and booting my rusty old computer, hoping to not wake up from my madness and to keep sharing crazy thoughts with Sancho. Now you know because my code doesn't work!