Yes, this is the kind of a story which are being dramatised in movies - a highly functioning autism, habit of attention to details and principial insistence on doing thing "just right" and enough free time and lack of distractions (by degens) to carry it on.

I remember when I saw the nginx code for the first time - I was so impressed that I wanted to build libnginx.a (of core data structures) for my own projects. Never happened.

The only comparable story I know is Rob Pike - similar principles and obsessions of doing just right, which, in turn, is related to good mathematics of finding and using just right abstractions by generalising from actual pattern.

If you want to learn C programming (and programming in general) read nginx and unit(nxt). Look how systematic, minimal and just right is everything.

I like to than Igor for teaching me and being an example.