Har!! I've been intending to post an answer to that question on the How Old Are You thread.

Let's put it this way: At the time I took my first programming class, I was at, truly, the cutting-edge institution for computer technology in the world (Stanford), and I was typing my programs on punchcards! (There weren't monitors at all; you would give your stack of punchcards to the computer operator to run and he would hand you back a printout.)

I was the fastest programmer in my class and I loved it, but I think I thought it was too nerdy. If I'd had the maturity I see in qwerty12 or underscore, I'd probably have stuck with it, but instead I majored in creative writing, took painting classes, lots of abstruse social theory ... Later, god forbid, I became a lawyer, and then I went back to school and got a physics degree, but not with any computer training.

I got back into computers (not programming, though) when I started a couple businesses and found that IT was essential to running any small business these days and that, if you were small and didn't have lots of money, you had to do it yourself.

Periodically I regret I didn't major in CS back at Stanford (but life has been good to me in other ways). The N800 has made doing all this stuff a lot of fun again.

I'm glad you're doing what you love. You can't beat that!

And I appreciate your encouragement, really!

Oh, 55.