Ian Nelson

There are two loving cups on a shelf in my office.

Earlier this week I published a reflective post on how agentic coding has changed my working day and the shape of the profession.

At the start of 2026, my working day looked roughly as it had done for the past couple of decades.

“Would it help if we reduced the number of questions from fifteen to ten?”

I was in two minds about whether to bother writing up my annual review of the books I most enjoyed this year.

Back at the start of 2019, when the NHS App had just launched, it had something of a discoverability problem.

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Betweening When you’re in between contracts, it’s easy to feel like you’re stuck in limbo.

I lost my contract this week.

My contract with NHS England has come to an abrupt end sooner than expected following a narrowing of focus within the Digital Prevention Services Portfolio.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, my daughter Isla was admitted to hospital with tonsillitis so severe she could no longer swallow.

There’s no television in our shared family living areas any more.

Once upon a desk, there was always a notebook.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I firmly believed that my productivity was directly proportional to the number of screens on my desk.

There are moments in the lifecycle of a project – quiet, almost undetectable ones – that act as inflection points.

I know, I know, you’ve heard all this before.

Since 2018 I’ve been reading far more than I used to.

For most of my adult life, in a way typical of those of us from the North, I have disdained London.

Back in 2022, in a bid to outwit my mother in our daily Wordle battles, I wrote some C# code to explore optimal starting guesses.

As 2024 draws to a close, I’ve taken some time to reflect on the books that made the greatest impact on me this year.

I had the pleasure of spending ISO Week 42 in the beautiful Portuguese coastal city of Porto, attending the NDC Porto 2024 conference for software developers by NDC Conferences.

Politics on the Edge: A Memoir from Within by Rory Stewart My very favourite book of 2023 was this autobiography by former Minister and one-time candidate for Conservative Party leader Rory Stewart.

Folks, this is your lucky day — Ian Nelson is back on the market.

The Top 5 Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari My favourite book of the year partially covers the same ground as previous favourites A World Without Email, Four Thousand Weeks, and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts…

Yesterday morning I arose unusually early for a Saturday and drove eastwards to attend this year’s DDDNorth at the University of Hull.

Ben: “Ian, Ian!”

Another visit to Stanage Edge to admire the mighty Stanage Pole.

Another enjoyable day out scrambling with my daughter Isla.

Like (it would seem) most of the rest of humanity, the start of my 2022 has been immeasurably enhanced by starting each day playing Josh Wardle’s charming word game Wordle.

The Top 5 And Away… by Bob Mortimer As was the case in 2020, my favourite book of the year was an autobiography; this time by national treasure Bob Mortimer.

I’m on a break between contracts this week, so decided to make the most of the good weather and headed into the Peak District to revisit Stanage Edge for the first time since 2000.

My daughter Isla pronounced our April walk up Pen-y-Ghent to have been “a bit boring”.

A lovely spring Sunday walk up Pen-y-ghent in the Yorkshire Dales with my daughter Isla (her first hike up a proper hill).

So that, then, was 2020.

As the resident geek in our family, it won’t surprise you to hear that I am occasionally approached by Jocelyn and our kids to provide tech support.

One of the game-changing features of Synology‘s NAS (Network-Attached Storage) devices is their ability to run Docker, the industry-standard containerization technology.

Near the end of 2018, I stumbled upon a thread of tweets by First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon in which she shared some of the many books that she had enjoyed during that year.

Day One – Saturday 26th May 2018 Twenty years after bagging my first Munro – the dreary Meall a’ Chrasgaidh – and somehow developing an affinity for the Great Scottish Outdoors, I found myself heading northwards once again.

I had no excuse for not attending DDDNorth this year, as it was held at Leeds University, a relatively short drive from home.

“We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals” — Stonecutter’s creed Consider for a moment, if you will, the humble Boolean.

As a lowly sellsword amongst the ensemble cast that make up the incestuous York/Leeds IT scene, I am not usually one to be influenced by the promise of titles and honours.

My first printer was a Star LC-20 nine pin dot matrix that I received as a Christmas present when I was 15 years old.

I have been merrilly using NCrunch – an “automated concurrent testing tool for Visual Studio” – for almost three years now.

Blogging Again Right then, let’s give this blogging lark another shot, shall we?

Proudly presenting a new addition to the family – Mr Matthew Henry Nelson: He arrived at 0624 local time on the morning of Saturday 1st September, and weighed in at 7 pounds 6 ounces.

Are you plagued by bad code smells?

In the grand scheme of things, ’tis but a minor achievement, but I was quite chuffed with myself this evening when my Stack Overflow reputation finally reached the 10,000 mark: My girls made me a special “10K” cake to celebrate 🙂 Kudos to Jeff, Joel and t…

Almost everyone who has wandered past the various desks that I’ve occupied over the last year has passed comment on my Wacom Bamboo Pen Graphics Tablet.

This dumb mistake just cost me an hour spelunking around in the debugger: var status = source.Substring(source.LastIndexOf("/" + 1)); (where source is e.g.

It’s been a long time since I posted a blog entry in the “genealogy” category (over three years, in fact).

This is the fifth in a series of five posts recounting my experiences using Entity Framework Code-First to replace ADO.NET and stored procedures in a client’s existing application.