I like working with Smalltalk because you can model real-world objects. Software is more durable if the code hangs around real objects, like people and accounts, instead of arbitrary divisions like modules and files. I became fascinated with computers in high school because you could solve problems using brute force instead of finesses. Unlike people, computers are perfectly happy repeating the same set of tasks many times. The best kind of challenge is getting the format and meaning of a document just right. I do a lot of work in Excel where it's difficult to expose the structure of the information. It's easier for people to understand a computer system if the programming model matches the user's conceptual model. Otherwise, the system behaves in unexpected ways. Favourite keyboard shortcut: Shift+Alt+Arrows because it changes the heading level of a paragraph and I write a lot of structured documents.