I remember three distinct events: me being in front of a window in the computer class in high school, too young to be allowed in. I watched the four Hazeltine 300 baud terminals there in awe fascination - REAL computers (did not know the difference then). This must be somewhere in the early 80's, and decided on the spot to become 'a computer man'. And I did go for it. The third event was when I was working as a junior programmer in the early 90's, about a year or so, as was heavily hacking on a complex UNIX script, while I suddenly stopped and thought: "Is this what I wanted?". And after a few seconds came "YESSS!" and I hacked further, till it worked. The third and most vividly remembered event was somewhat later: I had decided to take a hit on object oriented programming again. Had been playing around with Visual C++2.0 for a while and did not get it. Along came Java, and after three evenings of prodding it happened: sitting behind my private PC is a very small room, something 'clicked', and I suddenly saw this whole 'object thing' very cleary appearing in my mind, like a carpet that suddenly rolled out, a valley you can look in after a long climb to the top of the hill, or a faulty machine suddenly starting to run VERY smootly. I could juggle these objects in my mind, and see them working together. After that is was very hard to make non-OO programs again ;-). The love with Java did not last... after I got to see the very first .NET beta. But the love of the 'object thing' never died ;-)