About
My name is Danny Beard - I’m a software engineer currently living in the southwest florida region with my wife, daughter and soon a son :) I enjoy all aspects of software development, even though this may tend towards web development recently due to the nature of the beast.
My interest in programming, or more in general technology, starts at the beginning. Thanks to some awesome parents, I always remember having a computer in the house, starting with a Commodore 64. While the majority of my time was spent playing such classics as Impossible Mission, Summer Games or Jungle Hunt, this is where I was first exposed to programming in the form of Commodore BASIC. While I never made anything meaningful, the idea of being able to create software myself - telling a computer what to do and having it succesfully do it, was something amazing and exciting for me. This interest stuck with me throughout my life. My first formal class in computer science was in High School where I took an AP Computer Science course with C++ being the langauge taught.
From there, I went on to achieve a dual bachelors in Computer Science and IT at the University of Missouri in 2007, and a Masters in Computer Science in 2009. For anyone interested, my thesis can be viewed here. Throughout my college career, I worked for a creative development group at the University of Missouri where I was able to explore new technologies working on a wide range of projects, most notably a children’s health museum located in Columbia, MO. I currently work for a large orthopaedic manufacturing company in Naples, FL working on marketing and research based web applications in the orthopaedic field.