Emily couldn't deny she was impressed by the amount of thought Justin put into their first date. It showed her that he sincerely wanted to get back into her good graces and move forward. Plus it was super cute how excited he got about his computer code plate. She didn't think he had an artistic side at all but of course it would be related to computers.
Seeing him make that plate increased her understanding of his life exponentially. How much patience did you need to have to stare endlessly at streams of colored text and adjust tiny details for weeks or even months at a time? And yet he seemed to genuinely enjoy it. If he didn't, he wouldn't spend almost every waking hour on it. She imagined that other programmers treated it as a job, clocking out and doing other things when the work was done. Justin treated it as a lifestyle. The second he finished coding, he started coding something else.
