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Comment by verinus | Hacker News Reader

Best reply as I am concerned.

I have a "ToLearn" list that keeps getting longer and longer as I struggle to have some quality time where I can learn and really comprehend stuff AFTER putting my 4 year old daughter to sleep- i too have to stay with her till she is asleep- often with me also going to nap...

When I am getting stressed and mad about all those constraints I picture the sweet moments with the knowledge, that there are just a few years left where my daughter and son are small enought to want to play with me ;)

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I have both this "to learn" list and an ever expanding bookshelf (which grows faster than I can read the damn things, mostly thanks to recommendations in HN comments).

Being 5 months into the parenting adventure, I seem to get a few hours a month on each side project at the moment! It really does make you prioritise. (And work harder on things I can do on my rail commute than other tasks).

I haven't got to the "wants to play with me" part yet, just the "oh man, I just spend half an hour staring at the baby being cute" stage. :)

My daughter just turned five months.

Her favorite game at the moment is to press all the buttons on my keyboard. Whether or not a computer is remotely nearby.

I might not have much time to bang away on code, but seeing her proud of grabbing and biting a book, is much more exciting.

Yeah, I did that, and then some of the buttons stopped working on the keyboard from too much smashing from the children. In the end, I removed the cable from the keyboard and it became a toy. I never let the kids play with the replacement one, but they do love having their own real keyboard.

Hmm, thank you for the warning. Was it a mechanical one? I fear for my WASD! I have plenty of spare plastic dome keyboards in a box. Now I have a real excuse not to throw them out!

> but seeing her proud of grabbing and biting a book, is much more exciting.

this is exactly the sort of common statement from parents that is completely impenetrably unfathomable by non-parents and may even frighten the latter a bit as to how something so superficially insipid can attain a compelling and inexplicable level of fascination

Of course, you could say similar things about non-parents playing games for hours and hours which essentially consist of bumping numbers up to higher values in mutable RAM and considering it a "good waste of time"

The thing is, you've just spent a month watching this pair of eyes follow you around the room, and this face very slowly get the hang of smiling (initially it is only when they are defecating).

When they get to the stage of being able to hold objects, this is a major event. When they get the hang of putting stuff in their own mouths during teething, rather than screaming until you let them bite your finger, is another, similar world-changing event.

This was a mystery to me too, before. Now I understand, and am even mildly interested in other peoples' babies (since I have one to compare them with.)

Parenting also has another similarity with D&D: your adversary is surprisingly intelligent. (when they're grouchy, they'll see through your hacks very quickly and scream until you do it properly, however tired you are. A "hack" in this instance might be giving them the same toy to chew again, rather than a new one from the mat.)

Oh, I wasn't knocking it! I'm sure that (possibly soon?), whenever I get around to making life, I'll be quite fascinated by it (I seem to find fascination often! There's a lot of complexity out there!)

Watching a brand new human go from a useless blob to a walking, biting, hand-waving mini-human is pretty fascinating stuff, especially if said tiny human belongs to you.

hehe yes I still remember beeing a first-time-dad :D

But it keeps getting even better- at about 18 months they become "real" persons! I mean they learn to communicate and suddently want things (in the meaning want to do or have).

It's always awesome when my little son takes my hand after dinner and mumbles "build" so I play some duplo with him.

I've come to terms with the fact that my ever expanding bookshelf (and steam library) are now my kid's (eventually)

Some of my fondest memories are stealing the books from my mom's library.

She didn't mind one bit, and there was always someone to discuss the book when I was done!

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