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Ian Pritchard Avatar

Ian Pritchard

A natural engineer, I wrote my first program at the age of 12 and never looked back! I have worked in the sphere of engineering for my entire career and even as I changed roles, kept my passion for coding alive through constant learning in the evenings and on weekends. Now I specialize in Python, with a minor in JavaScript based technologies. If you want to read more about those changing roles, read my LinkedIn bio 🙂 https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianstuartpritchard/

Latest articles

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Ian Pritchard

  • How To Start Finishing – Learning from Agile Practices

    Ian Pritchard

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    15 min read

    Summary Many of the agile tools, principles and guidelines used by large IT enterprises can be used by small teams or individual engineers to improve efficiency and create more value. In this article, I’d like to explore these concepts with you to help you level up your engineering practice. The underlying agile principle I’ll explore is “Stop Starting. Start Finishing.” In other words, rather than constantly starting new work, concentrate on completing the work you are currently doing-transforming from a Starter to a Finisher. When Starters think of a new idea, they drop what they are doing and start working…

  • It’s not you – it’s me

    Ian Pritchard

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    4 min read

    Every so often I get convinced that a challenge test suite is wrong or Python is somehow giving me the wrong results. “It’s You”! I checked and quadruple-checked my code. I walked through every single line in the IDE debug mode noting how the variables changed as the code branched through. I printed everything printable and more. What is wrong with you, Python? What is wrong with these tests? Whose mistake is this? Sadly, experience shows it’s highly likely that Python is working and the tests are just fine. I will save time and frustration if I just admit that…