Interesting, I just finished this book. I tried it in high school, it seemed profound at the time, but I couldn't finish it. Now I'm an older software dev and it was much easier to read this time around, but I feel like I missed something. Did Hofstatder gloss a bunch of stuff in the final couple of chapters? Or did I just fail to grasp all the strange loop stuff and put it together on my own? Not sure. I still enjoyed it, and it gave me some good ways of conceptualizing brains, minds, thoughts, etc. Especially the ant colony stuff.