Nick Cameron on Juggling Open Source Work and Parenthood

Building with Rust

Nick Cameron sat down to chat with us about his Rust journey, including his experiences working as a member of the Rust core team back in the language's pre-1.0 days. He left the core team and open source contributor-ship in 2019 due to his growing family, but has since returned to full-time open source work; he spends most of his time now consolidating the different pillars that make up Rust's async ecosystem. Through it all, he has learned how to effectively juggle open source work with his priorities as a parent and family man.

Nick's website is https://ncameron.org. You can follow him on Twitter @nick_r_cameron.

The Rust 2021 annual survey results blog post: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2022/02/15/Rust-Survey-2021.html

Nick's blog post on the portable and interoperable async Rust initiative: https://www.ncameron.org/blog/portable-and-interoperable-async-rust/

Nick's Rust in 2022 blog post: https://www.ncameron.org/blog/rust-in-2022-2/

You can send us an email at buildingwithrust AT gmail DOT com or find us in the Rustacean Station Discord server.

Timestamps

• 1:09 - Nick's intro
• 2:04 - Nick's history with Rust
• 7:14 - Memories from working on Rust pre-1.0
• 8:48 - Dynamically-sized types have some rough edges
• 12:31 - Reflecting on the Rust core team
• 17:43 - The portable and interoperable async initiative
• 31:16 - How much should the Rust standard library support async programming?
• 35:47 - Returning to full-time open source work
• 46:08 - Juggling open source work and parenting
• 55:00 - Nick's sign-off
• 57:28 - Outro