Today I am making a solemn commitment: Going forward, I will do as much of my learning as possible in public. One reason I’m doing this is to repay my debt to the thousands of generous people who have publicly shared their learning, immeasurably improving my life.

Every person who posted in a forum about how they got a microphone to work, every kid who put up a 42 minute YouTube video about how they’re currently doing unit testing, every person who wrote publicly about their struggles with writing publicly… I owe them all.

I have (almost) no aspirations of building a “channel” or amassing followers. I know that most of the esoteric stuff I’m learning might appeal to one other person in the world 20 years after I’m dead.

That would be the greatest fulfillment of the deepest promise of the web.

Even if your goal is to become a Profitable YouTuber™ with a hyper-focused channel/brand (nothing wrong with that), I hope you never get so focused that you can’t share your learning somewhere.

It takes little extra effort, it helps you, and it might change someone’s life.

The best way to thank an Internet Pal is to do it for someone else. You have no idea the effect that your rambling post about getting your spaghetti carbonara just right could have. It might be the thing that opens up an entire culinary world to someone.