That's pretty delightful, to think of someone using a computer as such a pure tool like that (as opposed to a distraction machine as is so often the case).

I like to imagine the author finally hit the limit of the 20MB hard drive, then decided, "you know what, rather than put 2 spaces after periods, I'll replace them all with a single space like the kids do", saving 400KB, and making room for at least a couple more weeks of work while shopping for a new computer.