This brings back fond memories. It's been a _long_ time since then, and I was about 14yo. This was pre-internet, the BBS era. My computer, an old PC XT, 8086 based. I was getting new software via mail order from various specialized magazines, or from BBS's (to which I did not have access directly at that time -- not particularly relevant to this story).<p>One day, I got something infected with a virus named Romania.856 (I will always remember this name), a COM infector, as I found out from F-Prot Antivirus (which came with a great db with information about viruses -- such a great read for the young me!).<p>The tools available to me were still very limited; I had not yet discovered TDD (Borland Turbo Debugger). But I was dead set to understand how the virus worked. There I was, using the very limited `debug` tool that came with MS-DOS. I've learned x86 Assembler from various texts downloaded from BBS's. I reverseengineered Romania.856, and learned how it worked, and did my own experiments. That's how I spent my summer vacation that year.<p>This was the beginning of some of the most beautiful years of my life, with regard to computers. It lasted for a bit over half a decade, time in which tech evolved fast, I got an internet connection (still dialup back then), I discovered IRC, met people with similar interests and so on. What I miss the most now is the feeling of everything being new, the possibility for exploration and discovery.