Darrell here!

Recently I was a Dean of Engineering and Information Sciences. I have taught teachers how to teach programming and other computer science courses. I have taught students programming, systems analysis, database, web design and many other computer science courses. And I have programmed in Assembly, Fortran, COBOL, Pascal, Basic, Visual Basic, C#, C, C++, Python, Objective C, Swift, JavaScript, Java and more. I am by no means an expert in all of them but I have and experience with them all.

I taught at Mount Mary College, Cardinal Stritch University, Lakeland College, DeVry University, Keller Graduate School of Management, SouthEast Technical Collage, and several community colleges.

Before that I was an Information Technology Consultant. That’s a fancy name for “Computer Guy”. I was a technology expert witness for Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office. I was the first in the state to put a local Wisconsin newspaper online. I designed and installed a real-time stock market ticket system for a client. It was accessible to all computers in the client company. I developed a patient class scheduling system for a mental health facility. I created a bakery management system capable of tracking ingredients and forecasting purchases for a national bakery and food vendor. These and many others systems were the result of problem solving for client companies.

I assembled computers; wrote software; networked the computers. I installed the computers, software and networks at dozens of client locations. And I taught the staff how to use them.

And before that I was just like you. I wanted to work with computers. I wanted to be a programmer. I wanted to be a systems analyst. I wanted to be a problem solver. But I wasn’t sure how.

Back in the day colleges weren’t ready for this. You could, maybe, find a programming course; but a degree that taught you computer science was rare. Learning on your own was doable but not easy in a pre-internet world. College was the best bet at the time but you had to customize your learning.

I studied three years at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in pursuit of a Computer Engineering degree. My thoughts were to learn what made the equipment tick. Learning hardware was a good approach but more was needed. I ended up with a B.S. degree in Business from Cardinal Stritch University and topped that off in later years with a Master’s in Computer Science from Stritch. Schools were beginning to offer such things.

That said and done I have spent a large part of my life working with computers, programming languages and problem solving. And I had a lot of fun along the way. And I raised a family along the way. Made a lot of friends as well. The next stage is to pass this information on to you. That’s the reason for this site. It’s a place for you to learn the art of problem solving with technology.

Enjoy!