whoami

Hey. You came. Well, thanks, come on in and have a seat. Can I get you a drink? I've got Guinness in the fridge...

This tech blog will be a space specifically for me to write my thoughts on general technology, programming, user experience, business management, or anything else I decide I want to use my soapbox (can it be called a soapbox if no one reads it?) for, but typically web technology and project management. I'll tell you about my experiments and work with various programming/scripting/markup languages: JavaScript, PHP, Java, Apex, Flash, Flex, ActionScript 3.0, CSS, and html among others. I'm also interested in computer hardware and gadgets, so I might occasionally write about that stuff - pretty much if I have a thought that I think at least one other person would find helpful, useful or otherwise interesting, well, I might put it on here.

Ok, so that's what I may or may not talk about - but the title of the entry was "whoami" - which of course is the UNIX command to get the current userid - so this entry is the response to that command.

var MattHowey = {

prof: "RIA Software Developer",

city: "Philadelphia",

state: "PA",

lang: "English"

}

Right...so I'm not going to write the entire post in JSON...and UNIX doesn't really speak JSON natively anyway...

I'm Matt Howey and I would generally call myself a "Web Product Developer". I have been making websites since about 1997, and professionally since 1999. I was a print graphic designer for a period before that. I'm working on my MBA at Drexel University and have a Bachelor Degree in Communications & Public Relations as well as a Degree in Graphic Design & Computer Graphics - but who really cares about that mumbo jumbo. It's not what did you do for me in college, it's what can you do for me right now. Technology has changed dramatically in just the time I was obtaining those qualifications. My personal growth from Graphic Designer to Programmer and general Ria Developer has been a constant learning experience - new languages, new versions of languages, W3C standards...sometimes it's all a bit overwhelming. Hard to decide what direction you want to go with things from a technological standpoint. So far, I'm thinking that having a lot of experience, in a few things - and a little experience, in a lot of things is a good way to actually be good at something while keeping your horizons as wide-open as possible by experimenting with as many technologies as time will allow.

I digress... For me, with an art and graphic design background, the natural progression was into frontend development. Basically, I knew how to make something that looked pretty good in PhotoShop, but when it came down to putting it on the web, I didn't really know what I was doing. I first learned HTML by making something in the DreamWeaver WYSIWYG, then switching over to code view to see what it made. Once I was creating html tables on my own, I was off and embedding tables, inside tables, inside tables, inside....huh? Yes, this is how layout was done in the CSS stone ages.

I have progressed from embedded tables, weird frame setups, and generally messy and non-semantic markup to programming in different capacities in various languages like JavaScript, PHP, Groovy, ActionScript, C#, and Java -- inside various frameworks such as Zend, CodeIgniter, Spring, .NET and Grails. They're all interesting in their own ways, and their development environments are interesting as well. I started by working with PHP, MySQL, HTML and CSS - but I like the tool that makes development a joy. The tool must allow for clean, structured, and performant code.

I have a penchant for the overall user experience. From product design and market placement to product development and market introduction. I like to think beyond the software for user experience to the bigger picture. I have figured out how to draw people to a product by providing value. Depending on the situation, the value proposition may change, but it is usually there - and many times, underserved by the competition. Acquiring market share is not an easy task, but becomes an impossible task without a good user experience.

That's it for now. Now you know the things that I've been thinking about. I plan to keep this entry up to date as sort of a "spoken living" summary of my professional interests, and as I mentioned before "other stuff". Thanks for reading.