Location Westport, Connecticut, United States Regions East Coast, New England, Northeastern US Gender Male
LinkedIn View on LinkedIn X (Twitter) View on X
Over the years, Mark Lassoff has taught thousands of students programming languages and skills. As an energetic, dynamic classroom presenter and skilled developer, Mark has provided training at some of America's largest companies and organizations.
Mark grew up on the coast of Connecticut, close to New York City. As an enterprising high
school sophomore, Mark was consulting with local real estate firms and writing Hayes modem scripts to automate their interaction with remote MLS databases. It seemed only natural for Mark to study computer science when he attended college at the University of Texas at Austin. While at the University of Texas, Mark was lucky enough to learn about the Djkstra algorithm from Ed Djkstra himself, who was a professor there at the time.
Mark worked for several companies as a developer and programmer following college. For a period Mark led teams at Fidelity National Financial and was later appointed Vice President of Network Logistic, the largest IT services firm in Texas. While at Network Logistic, Mark ran the software and web development division. During Mark's tenure the division tripled its staff and quadrupled in profitability. While at Network Logistic, Mark moved the division in to mobile development. Mark oversaw several successful projects for Dell, GSDM, and a major airline customer. Mark left Network Logistic when it was sold to new ownership in 2008.
Despite Mark's success as a developer and executive, he quickly found a different calling. Mark had occasionally had the opportunity to lead seminars and training classes and found teaching to be especially rewarding. Mark started LearnToProgram.tv in January 2009. Mark and his company have since provided corporate training at companies such as Motorola, jetBlue, ADP, Discover Card Services and Lockheed Martin. Mark has developed technical curriculum as a consultant for the US House of Representatives, Booz Allen Hamilton and Northrop Grumman.
Mark's philosophy is that programmers learn by doing-- not by by listening to lecture. Mark's classes are full of guided activity, lab exercises and mentored learning all of which are designed to simulate the challenges the students will face when doing actual development projects.
Mark continues to teach and develop custom technical training for companies all over the country. Mark is has also authored and hosted several video training titles on subjects including Java Programming, Objective C, AJAX and Javascript. Mark was recently appointed series editor and an author for Focal Press’ new “Code Camp†series of books, which are designed to teach programming and development in a manner that is fundamentally different—and better—than traditional pedagogy.
Mark continues to reside in Connecticut, where he is looking for a new condominium. Got one for sale?
