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Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #22 A Good Neighbour worths a Thousand Silver Coins(千金买邻)
Good to be around high-quality people.
This article is one of the “Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals” series.
Story
Lu Sengzhen held a very high position in the imperial court of Liang Dynasty (approx. 500 A.D). Later he returned to his hometown as the prefecture governor. He did everything possible to keep a clean government and took good care of the local people. Therefore, he was highly respected by all, even after he retired.
One day, a family moved into the next house of the Lu’s. Lu immediately paid a courtesy visit to the new neighbour. During the conversation, they mentioned the house price and the neighbour said that he paid 1,100 silver coins for the house.
“What?!” Lu was very surprised. He didn’t expect that the house next to his was so costly.
Seeing this, the neighbour explained: “Oh, no, the house only cost one hundred. The extra one thousand is the value of having you as a neighbour.”
Meaning
A good neighbour is more precious than a house's worth; Good to be around high-quality people.
Examples in Software Development
As a software professional and the family’s sole income earner, like many, my first priority was to get a high-paid job and keep it. Now I look back, it was not good in terms of personal (and therefore career) growth.
Luckily for me, I started my programming career at a research centre (later, the W3C office in Australia) at the University of Queensland. I had 3.5 years of time working with some very smart people. Under their influences, I
- developed a habit of reading Computer Books.
After lunch, a few colleagues and me often walk to the book shop to find bargains. Also, as a research staff, I have similar access to the Uni Library as a lecturer. The two books “Code Complete” and “eXtreme Programming Explained”, which had a big impact on me, were borrowed from the library.
After leaving the academic environment, I found most of my colleagues…
