The Raku Programming Language Collect, Conserve and Remaster Project
Originally published on 17 March 2010 by Patrick Michaud.
For those of you who are wondering where I’ve been lately with Raku and Rakudo development, here’s the story. As many of you know, my wife was diagnosed in early 2008 with ovarian cancer and remission 1,2. Over the past few weeks various tests have indicated a probable cancer recurrence; and on March 2nd my wife was diagnosed with a small-bowel obstruction requiring immediate hospitalization. Since then nearly all of my time and energy has been essentially dedicated to caring for her and her needs. As of this writing (Mar 16) we’re still in the hospital and hope she will be able to return home in the next couple of days.
The most obvious question relating to Rakudo development is “How does this affect scheduling of the Rakudo Star release in April?” Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for this at the moment, as I don’t yet have a firm date of when her recovery might be sufficiently far along that I can devote significant time again to Raku. I could be available again in just a few days, or it could take many weeks.
For now I’ve asked the core Rakudo and Raku developers to work out what they think will be the best course of action for Rakudo Star given my current situation. As far as I’m concerned, all options are on the table (e.g., delaying the release a bit), but I think that whatever is decided needs to be a consensus among the entire development team. I suspect we will collectively announce an updated plan sometime in the next few days.
As I did in 2008, I’ll tend to limit any further public posts about the current medical situation to major developments. But if anyone has any questions, I’ll be glad to answer them.
As always, my wife and I send our thanks to everyone for your prayers, support, and understanding.