Dan has been programming professionally for more than 20 years, with more than half that time working as a consultant and contract programmer, including several projects for Microsoft Consulting Services. His consulting projects have ranged from programs for mutual fund analysis and supply chain management to systems for missile tracking. He has also taught courses on various programming languages, Windows programming, UNIX internals, and a number of other topics, in both the United States and Europe.

Dan's first programming language was C, but he soon became intrigued by the journal articles about a new language called "C with Classes." Eventually that language was renamed C++ and released to the world. He began using C++ as soon as he could get access to a compiler, and eventually started teaching training seminars on the language as well.

With the advent of C# and .NET, he has moved on to enjoying the myriad advantages of the new language and platform, and has been working with them enthusiastically ever since.