DEV Community

Discussion on: My involvement in the Python community

Collapse
 
pauloxnet profile image
Paolo Melchiorre

Hi Michiel, thanks for your appreciation and for your comment.

I wrote this article and other things in the past, so I'm no longer in the "Excuse my poor English" phase, but actually I was there in the past and had to study a lot to no longer be there.

I made a lot of efforts to complete the university and to be a good software developer, but by the age of 30 I realized that I could read English but I couldn't speak or write it, and this was a real obstacle in being appreciated as a software developer, and in contributing in free software.

I started doing a lot of things to learn English: taking courses, reading articles and books, watching series and videos, listening to podcasts and lectures. I started attending regular meetings to speak in English and I changed the language of all my things: pc, telephone, tv, .... I also lived for a few months in London, and spent a lot of time, effort and money doing this.

In the meantime I worked as a software developer, I had side projects, I studied a lot of technical things, I attended some local technical meetings, national and international conferences and I started giving talks.

I am happy to read and listen about the inclusiveness in these years in the field of Free Software and in various technical conferences and I wanted to highlight another thing that can really exclude you from the community, regardless of how good you are technically.

I hope the native English developers can think more about this, and maybe someone can start adding something related in various "Code of Conduct" of communities, conferences and projects, etc ...