Bad news

Originally published on 15 January 2008 by Patrick Michaud.

In case people are noticing a sudden slowdown in the frequency of my journal posts and in my commits to the compiler, I wanted to give people some indication of what has happened.

For the last half of December and the first week of January my wife hadn’t been feeling well and was getting progressively worse. Finally on this past Tuesday things got bad enough that we took her to the emergency room. After a few hours of waiting and tests we learned that she has ovarian cancer. Since then most my attention has obviously been on taking care of her and the rest of our family.

How I think this will affect Raku compiler development: Based on the research we’ve done and what we’re hearing from her oncologist, I’m thinking that this will be just a temporary slowdown for a couple of weeks. The compiler is continuing to progress without my direct involvement – Jerry Gay, Cosimo Streppone, Simon Cozens, and others have continued to add features without having to check with me for every little detail. In fact, making it possible for others to work on the compiler is one of the outcomes we’ve been hoping to achieve. Jerry Gay in particular has been picking up some of the leadership for the compiler, so from my perspective I don’t feel we’re losing too much momentum. (Read Jerry’s journal posts to get an idea of the progress that is being made.)

Beyond that, even with this week’s “surprises” there have been more than a few times when it’s convenient (and somewhat therapeutic) for me to continue to think, develop, and write about Raku. This journal post is but one example. So, my current expectation is that as our family gets another week or so along the road to recovery, I’ll again have time to work on Raku development. Of course, if things take a big turn for the worse then all bets are off.

How this affects the Mozilla Foundation and TPF grants: I’m very grateful to the grant managers for their generosity, understanding, and support over the past week. The grant status report for December 2007 is obviously delayed, and barring any sudden changes I’m expecting to be able to write it up this week. And as soon as I have a better feel for events to come I’ll be working with the grant managers on any timeline changes or restructuring that needs to be made. I expect any overall negative impact on the grant outcomes to be minimal.

After this post my writings will tend to remain focused on the Raku progress and not much about the medical issues, unless major events take place. But if anyone has any questions, I’ll be glad to answer them.

Thanks again to everyone for being understanding and helpful – we greatly appreciate it.