One of the most humbling moments in my life was learning from a friend what a object was, and how that differed from GOTO statements. I had already done someth

One of the most humbling moments in my life was learning from a friend what a object was, and how that differed from GOTO statements. I had already done something similar by inventing abstraction, when I figured out that I could pre-define certain musical notes and then use those defined notes more simply in my BASIC code. I had not, however, made the leap between re-using notes and re-using rooms in a text adventure. That realization that all re-used things can be abstracted was formative, and I am very thankful to my friend for having explained what he was doing with rooms. At some level, I regret that I learned BASIC before an object-oriented language; at another, I'm glad that I did, because my training in stupidity made very obvious to me my shortcoming in logic when I learned a better way.