[WalterBright]

Note that experience was entirely negative. Nobody offered to help write any code, invest any money, do any marketing of any kind, etc.

Even after I wrote the compiler and was shipping it, a different colleague asked me one day: "Walter, I have a friend that needs a C compiler. Which one do you recommend?"

Me: "Why, mine (Datalight C), of course!"

Colleague, laughingly, "Not yours, Walter, a real compiler!"

A friend of mine, who was in earshot of this little exchange, thought it was most hilarious.

If you want to do things like this, you've got to have a pretty thick skin for this sort of "help" from your colleagues.