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Russell Helmstedter

Russell teaches math and coding—preferably at the same time—at De Anza Academy of Technology & the Arts in Ventura, CA.

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Russell Helmstedter
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    Stuck in import hell? Walk your way out.

    Russell Helmstedter

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    15 min read

    Welcome to Hell Cue the theme song from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This is a story that turns out well. But my code got stuck in import hell. I tried to teach my students all about pytest. Instead, for two days, I was sent on a debugging quest. I teach middle school students […]

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    A Case Study in Refactoring Python: Clean Code Is Often Faster

    Russell Helmstedter

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    21 min read

    I have learned a lot over the past 2.5 years of my Python journey. What started out as a hobby during COVID-19 lock downs in 2020, has now become a major component of my professional workload. This article is designed to highlight the importance of the iterative process: write some code -> learn new stuff […]

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    Automating the Boring Stuff and Plotting Student Data

    Russell Helmstedter

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    12 min read

    My name is Russell Helmstedter. I am a middle school math and computer science teacher at De Anza Academy of Technology & the Arts (DATA). My first exposure to Python was in March of 2020. For some reason, I was stuck at home and couldn’t go out and do things. I decided to learn how […]