Dan Saks is the founder and president of Saks & Associates. He served for many years as secretary of the ANSI and ISO C++ standards committee. He also served on the ANSI C committee.
Dan is a contributing editor for Embedded Systems Design (formerly Embedded Systems Programming). He has written columns for The C/C++ Users Journal, The C++ Report, The Journal of C Language Translation, Software Development, and the Windows/DOS Developer’s Journal (now the Window’s Developer Network), and contributed articles to Dr. Dobb’s Journal and The C++ Journal. His book C++ Programming Guidelines (written with Thomas Plum) received a Computer Language Magazine Productivity Award as one of the best books of 1992.
Dan has many years of teaching experience in both industry and academia. He has taught C++ and C to hundreds of programmers in North America and Europe. He has presented lectures and workshops on a wide range of topics at conferences such as Software Development, Embedded Systems, C++ World, and Object World. He served for many years on the advisory board of the Embedded Systems Conference and as the C++ track chair for the Software Development conference. He was among the few speakers selected to appear at the Best of Software Development 1993 conferences and the 1992 C++ Across America lecture tour.
Beyond writing and teaching, Dan collaborated with Thomas Plum in writing and maintaining Suite++TM, the Plum Hall Validation Suite for C++, a product that tests C++ compilers for conformance with the C++ standard. He has also consulted for various industries and defense agencies. Prior to founding Saks & Associates, Dan was a Senior Software Engineer for Fischer and Porter (now ABB) in Horsham, PA, where he designed programming languages and environments for distributed process control. He also worked several years as a programmer with Sperry Univac (now Unisys) in Blue Bell, PA.
Dan graduated with an M.S.E. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. He also received a B.S. with Highest Honors in Mathematics/Information Science from Case Western Reserve University in 1975.