charcoal

Then instead of sending an email, just append a bit of text in a text file. Separate those bits with a few blank lines and a "----" or something.

Keep a text file for each month, or week. Keep a directory for each year.

If your wife has something to add, have her either add to the text file herself, or else have her just type it up in gedit and you'll take care of moving the text.

Putting every little thing about your kid's life into emails is a recipe for disaster. Google will know more about him than anyone should know about anyone. That's obscene. Really. If you don't believe me, email Bruce Schneier or somebody and ask what they think.

And, besides, if you did email every single little thing to him, could you imagine the headache of looking through all those emails? I know from experience how difficult it is to clean out my inbox. Could you imagine a whole childhood of them?

What does the author mean by, "People are only an hour away from registering online for a new business."?

There's no date on this article and I remember bookmarking it long ago. When was it written?

Good intention, but bad idea. Instead, keep a scrapbook for him. To include text, write it in Emacs then print it out and paste in the paper. Put pictures in the scrapbook too. Involve your wife and decorate the pages too, if you like.

Forget about using gmail for this. Keep his childhood private -- he'll thank you for it. The scrapbook is something you can look at together on the couch as a family.

Almost everyone wants the same thing: they want to program apps for Android, but they don't want to use Java.

... and the kids don't get to see Dad much anymore.

Kids need to come first, and they need both parents. Mom and Dad: work it out -- for their sake.

d, you're supposing an awful lot about how the situation might have been. Fact is, there are a lot of women out there who want what they think is the status quo: husband away during the day, providing plenty of money, newish car(s), family going out to eat once or twice a week, cable tv, buying whatever you want at the grocery store without regard for price, big X-mases, no stress about being able to pay bills, etc., and if hubby doesn't provide it, he's thought of as inadequate.

Yes, there are many women who are shortsighted and only realize after the divorce that life doesn't work the way they thought.

cousin_it, in the US, women have all the advantages when it comes to marriage. If they want a divorce, almost by default the legal system provides them with the kids, house, alimony, and child support.

You're a lucky man.

> Does anyone comment to that degree?

As an undergrad, it's probably better to err on the side of too many comments. Then trim them down later as you get better at it.

Good comments also probably helps your prof grade your work.

How does your codebase look? Neatly organized and with tests? Does it use much modern best-practice, or are there a lot of not-so-nice pieces?

Also, it may just be difficult in general to find really good people to help maintain an already mature and large codebase.

> Site / blog sponsorships.

How does that work, exactly? Do you mean, you put links on your page to those other key companies and then get paid per click?

Wait. If I'm reading that right, you had utils written in Python that were 90% finished but then rewrote them in Perl and got them working.

What about Python was getting you stuck at 90%?

Perl has many features familiar to users of sh/bash. For admins who often deal with shell scripts, it's an easy reach to use Perl for all sorts of little things.

That said, I think you can still be responsible and use Python instead. ;) Might take you a few more keystrokes though.

The Python version of the CPAN is called ["PyPI"](http://pypi.python.org/pypi). It was formerly called the "Cheeseshop".

From the PyPI front page: "There are currently 5256 packages here." According to cpan.org, the CPAN is up to "14749 modules" -- dunno how many distributions that makes though.

> It's going to take ages for modules to get converted over...

You underestimate the power of the ... wait a sec. :)

Anyway, there's broad support and excitement in the community about this release. I think you'll see modules being updated more quickly than you suspect.

> There wouldn't be any need to make a new language. I can change anything I want in this one.

> I'm not deeply committed to the current approach to iteration. But I don't want to switch to something more complicated till I can prove it's a net win.

Paul, this doesn't sound right. Prove that a given change is a net win? Since you obviously can change anything you want at any time, why not go ahead and add the features that seem like they might be worth trying out? See what your users do with them. If the changes/additions turn out to be duds, just rip them out in the next version and let a subset of users whine about it. After all, users will whine either way -- may as well take the path that benefits Arc the most, right?