I was born in Belgrade (Yugoslavia) where I spent most of my life.
After graduating from college, I moved to Chicago near the end of '02. Although by education I am an electrical engineer, chain of events led me to become a freelance programmer.
For almost four years I was involved in programming and software development for an interdisciplinary research on creative processes at Chicago Center for Creative Development. CCCD is a place where people of different professions and talents exchange their ideas and challenge each others views, with the common goal of developing a theory for fostering creativity in human interactions.
Since then, I've been working mainly on PHP/MySQL driven website optimization and development.
Currently I am trying to figure out where to find some small (un)real estate to settle for a while.
I spend much of my spare time working on my own projects, of which educational software is the most ambitious one. As I am involved in all aspects of software development: conceptual design, specification, software architecture, implementation, testing, debugging, documentation; I can say with confidence that I am learning how to write programs. The idea for this software originated way back in high school, and it was inspired by my personal frustration with the educational system in my country (Ex-Yugoslavia). When I came to US, and noticed that (K-12) education here is in some ways better, but in other ways even worse.
What bothered me the most about education was not that it was bad and had to be improved, but the fact that better education methods were present, known and practiced elsewhere, and yet there was an absence of will to learn from them, and incorporate them. Even worse, I saw resistance to improvement in many places. That is why I am designing this internet based application as a solution that will make some of these educational methods accessible to children.
From time to time I also tutor students, and learn valuable things about the learning process that I incorporate into my software. Since the first grade of elementary school, I had this talent to prepare my classmates and friends for exams in a very short time.
'I was tutored by Lazar in November 2005 and had excellent results. Initially I was hoping for 450 in the quantitative section since I had been in the working world for a while and had forgotten a lot about math. Lazar and I met 5 times, he was professional and very helpful in not only teaching me principles of mathematics but also teaching how to take and pass the test. I scored a 600 on the quantitative section, largely due to Lazar and his tutoring. I would highly recommend him to anyone in need of a tutor.' - Matthew A Suma 02/DEC/05
'Lazar did an excellent job helping me prepare for my Calculus final exam. He helped me prepare in a very small amount of time, I passed the exam and graduated. Thanks again for all of your help Lazar.' - Dan
Note for students above: If you would like me to remove your testimonial for some reason, send me an e-mail from the same e-mail address from which you sent me original testimonial.
Lazar is designing a picture menu, and is proudly showing it to Jenny.
while not done:
keepWorking()
if work > good:
done = True
Jenny: What is that?
Lazar: It's a python, a programming language.
Jenny: Really?! What does it mean?
Lazar: Well, you read it and tell me.
Jenny: While not done, keepworking... Why is 'keep working' together, and why are there parentheses?
Lazar: keepWorking is a name of a task, and in python names are written as one word, and to distinguish them, second word is capitalized. It has parentheses because this task is explained in detail somewhere else, and here you just say that you do it.
Jenny: Hmm. Ok. then, if work ... greater than good, done equals true. How do I know from here what is 'good'?
Lazar: Good is also defined elsewhere. It may be for example 80%. Or it may be something else. It depends on what your work is, and how you express it.
Jenny: Oooo! I never thought programming is like this!
Lazar: Neither did I before I learned Python. Other programming languages are not so intuitive.
...
If you are a web programmer like myself, you may be interested to read about the way Angelo Gonzalez from Agora Web Solutions mistreats freelance contractor(s).
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