Programming is not a zero-sum game. Teaching something to a fellow programmer doesn't take it away from you. I'm happy to share what I can, because I'm in it for the love of programming.

It's nice to have a game that sells a million copies.

I'd rather have a search engine or a compiler on a deserted island than a game.

It is difficult to make good scalable use of a CPU like you can of a graphics card. You certainly don't want 'better or worse' physics or AI in your game

The Escalation programmers come from a completely different background, and the codebase is all STL this, boost that, fill-up-the-property list, dispatch the event, and delegate that. I had been harboring some suspicions that our big codebases might benefit from the application of some more of the various "modern" C++ design patterns, despite seeing other large game codebases suffer under them. I have since recanted that suspicion.