Couldn't agree more. I had a few rough years in business, that I only got through due to various forms of good luck (my business partner, my domestic partner, n

Couldn't agree more. I had a few rough years in business, that I only got through due to various forms of good luck (my business partner, my domestic partner, no debts, etc.) Two other points I think are relevant. First, people treat passions are something one is born to. The things I'm interested in now I learned of mostly due to accident. For example, I got into programming languages because I read Philip Greenspun's writing back in the day, which took me to SICP, and from there onto other programming language theory. I studies AI thinking I was interested in genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic, but an inspiring lecturer got me interested in statistical machine learning. These are just lucky accidents. There are many other areas that would be just as deep that I could have landed in. A few chance encounters at the right time and I might have ended up in graphics, or distributed systems, or some other field away from computing. Second, business as a sole trader is hard. It gets much easier when you can share the load and specialise a bit.