My Coding Impediment
I have a coding impediment. Well, outside of work (which is currently mostly Java), that is. My Rust projects certainly suffer from it, as does my ability to join certain conferences. I should perhaps note that this impediment is self-imposed, and that it is part of my personality – I don’t want to lose it.
In short: I have a family.
This creates a few complications. My time is almost fully divided between work, sleep and family stuff. There is precious little time for coding. I usually code either on my commute (for which I use public transit) or while cradling a kid (or more recently, cat) that doesn’t want (me) to sleep.
This means I will code in rather short intervals, and may also be more or less distracted while doing it. On the train I may be interrupted by a phone call from my wife, the ticket inspector or other passengers bumping into me. At home I’m likely to be interrupted by having a crying kid (or meowing cat) in my lap.
This is also why I may take some time to answer any request; I may be at work, taking time with my family or asleep.
I have to plan my vacations around the school’s holidays. Other vacations I need to arrange with my wife so there’s always someone looking for the kids. Worse, because we have three kids, there may be weekends where we have multiple events at overlapping times, so my wife cannot handle them alone. Because there are so many timing dependencies, we usually plan multiple weeks in advance.
(This is also why I withdrew a waitlisted proposal from this year’s RustFest – my planning horizon would already have passed once they decided to take or not to take the talk. Hopefully next time!)
Now you may ask why I’m telling you all of this. I’m not complaining. I chose this life. But I want you to be aware that everyone may have their personal complications to overcome and people not answering your requests right away, or forgetting to look at your PRs doesn’t mean they dislike you, or your code. They might simply be busy, or distracted. And if you plan a conference, please include child care and plan and communicate sufficiently ahead so that parents can use it. Thank you!