Dan Barlow's Webpage

Programming

The question is not "Do you know language X?"

The question is "How long will it take for you to become productive in language X?"

The answer is "About three weeks."

I learned BASIC at Emory & Henry College during a summer program in 10th grade. I then convinced my parents to purchase a TRS-80 Color Computer with Microsoft Color BASIC.

At Patrick Henry High School I learned Wozniak's Integer BASIC and entered various BASIC and assembly programs from magazines.

I won a science fair by programming an Apple II to model a Spirograph and produce plotter output identical to a user selected set of gears.

At Hampden-Sydney College I learned FORTRAN77 and GW-BASIC, including interfacing with Data Acquisition cards for experiment monitoring. I also did additional work with assembly language.

At NuMedia Corp. I learned Microsoft Visual BASIC and created native applications to manage advertising presentation schedules.

At Kevrik & Co. I learned how to interface Visual BASIC to ORACLE and C code.

At American PC I learned Microsoft Office and wrote a security clearance tracking database for the White House Military Office. I also learned HTML and CSS and helped maintain the company's web site.

At Data Consultants, Inc. I learned Delphi and wrote XML handlers and data extraction utilities. I was the lead programmer on the Electronic Data Interchange module. I also learned Crystal Reports and produced custom report modules for customers.

At Tax Analysts, Inc. I learned Perl and wrote data hygiene scripts for their collection of documents. I also took a class in Visual BASIC .NET.

At Solved, Inc. I learned File Maker Pro and modified a POS application to add custom label printing capability.

At Computer Consultants Corp. I learned the LAMP stack and produced database driven web sites for multiple prestigious clients. I also taught Microsoft Office, Adobe Suite, and certification prep classes.

At the National Institutes of Health, while working for Kelly Solutions, I learned Tcl/Tk and converted many command-line DOS utilities to native Windows apps. I learned E-Prime psychological stimulus presentation software and upgraded and created many experiments. I received recognition in published papers for my contributions. I learned to create TCP/IP packets for instrument control and synchronization.

In between all of the above I have used open source tools such as

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