On money, and missing the point

There are oftentimes when I talk enthusiastically about sharing my skills, techniques, and knowledge with other people. Usually this is greeted with enthusiasm in return, but sometimes I get a strange reaction… Whether it’s improving one’s codebase, or creating a spectacular outfit, or simply getting interesting people to meet and share their ideas, I’ll occasionally have a friend ask me if I really want to be doing that, because I’m giving away my “secrets”.

I appreciate that in business, a competitive advantage is a good thing. Being able to differentiate yourself from your competition is vitally important, and sharing one’s secrets with those who might use them to compete with you isn’t always a wise choice.

My problem with this attitude is that it assumes that money is the point of the exercise. It’s easy to think this, and from a business perspective it might be true, but thinking of money as the goal kind of misses the whole point of living.

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Kuala Lumpur, Day 0

After seventeen hours of travel, I've finally checked into my hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I'm here with Jacinta, and we're teaching Perl to a client next week, but we've arrived early to do some sight-seeing... and because we're insane.

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