In a recent book, he discusses the formative influence of the liberal arts on his approach to technical writing and software systems.

[2] Halvorson was an influential acquisitions editor at Microsoft Press during the early years of personal computing, acquiring and editing books from notable American technology writers such as Ray Duncan, Dan Gookin, Steve McConnell, Jerry Pournelle, Neil Salkind, and Van Wolverton.

[6] In May 1999, Halvorson's Running Microsoft Office 2000 attempted to calm fears about the pending Y2K problem (or Millennium bug), which the authors believed was driven by popular hysteria.

[8][9] As the Microsoft Windows platform gained momentum, Halvorson's Microsoft Visual Basic Step by Step book series popularized graphical user interface (GUI) programming by introducing and exploring Visual Basic, a product that simplified the process of Web development, game programming, and creating business applications.

An ethical component of Halvorson's work is his call to increase equity and access to programming instruction so that more may benefit from the opportunities afforded by digital electronic computing.

He has also published articles in Sixteenth Century Journal, Archive for Reformation History, and Lutheran Quarterly, the later a publication of Johns Hopkins University Press.