Blog

This will be the directory/home page for my blog.

Work

I'm a web developer and designer who has worked in a variety of industries,

About Matt Howey

Hi. Thanks for coming to my cloud -- here's a little bit about me...

How Did I End Up Here?

I'm a professional web software developer who was grown from artistic roots. I've always been a relatively creative person with an interest in creating art (drawing, painting, sculpture), so naturally, after having earned a degree in Graphic Design & Computer Graphics, I worked in production graphics for a couple years doing book layout, catalog layout, high-volume business cards, etc.

I first discovered web development by slicing apart my own PhotoShop designs and building out HTML templates. The need to store things in a database quickly became evident and so, like a lot of people, I learned PHP and MySQL. One of my first paid projects was installing a streaming webcam on the dance floor of a club and hooking it up to live-stream to their website.

Where am I now?

I'm currently a web UI developer at a fantastic company - Gr8 People corp. Professionally, I've worked at Johnson & Johnson as a front-end developer where I helped build out healthcare applications of all types. I've worked on Diabetes, Bariatrics, Orthopaedic, and Eye Surgery applications. Most of these application's main purpose is to improve the health outcomes of the treatment of some disease state (such as Diabetes). I have also worked doing web development for The Bank of New York's private client services division.

What's My Focus?

Today, I focus on creating user interfaces and experiences that provide a seamless path for the user to accomplish whatever they wish to. I focus on front-end architecture and programming including frameworks such as React, Angular 2+, and AngularJS. I am passionate about all-things front-end development such as Javascript, ES6, Typescript, CSS, SASS, HTML5, GraphQL, Node/NPM, Git, and more!

When I write applications now, I am making a concerted effort to offload as much back-end workload to cloud providers (i.e. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure) as possible and working toward a truly "serverless" architectures -- but only when the use-case is appropriate.

I'm a believer...

• in Agile development methods such as Scrum (iterate quickly, fail fast)
• in the "JAMstack" ideology -- a.k.a. "Javascript APIs and Markup"
• that static websites are almost always faster and provide a better user experience
• that "static" doesn't necessarily mean "not dynamic"
• that there are still plenty of use-cases for managing your own server
• that there are gobs of untapped potential in Progressive Web Applications (PWAs)
• that most web applications do mobile poorly - hello responsive!
• optimization is still important despite the proliferation of broadband - not everyone is on the latest network and device!

What else do I do?

I ride bikes. Mountain bikes. Road bikes. Cyclocross bikes. Indoor bikes. You name it...I like to ride when I can!

I have a quasi tech blog here:   ES6.TODAY  |^| (opens in new window)

Matt Howey

Web Developer and Designer
Exton Pennsylvania

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