About

Heath’s Bio

Heath J. Howard has been in software development leadership since he first taught himself Frontpage and Photoshop in the spring of 2000, but quickly realized how limited website creation was without backend programming, so he bought some O’Reilly books on Perl/CGI and MySQL and started a software development agency with his Dad. 

After a brief infatuation with Adobe Flash, which oddly enough, helped him land a job at an international tax software company, Heath became a Lead and later Manager over a team developing several market leading multi-million dollar web applications.  He is now Director of Custom Software Development at High Touch Technologies where his team creates custom software and consulting ranging from web applications, mobile apps, desktop software, and middleware for businesses.

Quotes by Heath: 

“Agile should work for you, not the other way around”

Heath J Howard

“Not making security a primary focus of your software is like an airline not worrying about keeping planes in the air.” 

HEATH J HOWARD

“Never let the weakest link in your security chain be you!”

HEATH J HOWARD

“There was an ancient practice in China, which is banned now, where they would bind the feet of young girls to restrict their growth and keep them from running away later on.  When we lock people into roles without giving them opportunities to grow we are binding the feet of their career.”

HEATH J HOWARD

“Our lives are full of habits, for good or ill, why not culture habits that lay the foundation for success?”

HEATH J HOWARD

“Habits are like coding subroutines for the human operating system.  They can run in the background while the core application can focus on more critical functions.  The more of our life that we can offload to the subroutines of habits, the more our mind can focus on critical functions.  You can literally free up system memory in your mind by creating more good habits in your life.”

HEATH J HOWARD

“Luck plays a huge role in success, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have any control.  You just have to increase your ‘luck footprint’ This means putting yourself out there more, taking chances, and being ready for opportunities when they come along.”

HEATH J HOWARD

“Why would a BA in Computer Science from 1999, before smartphones or cloud computing even existed, be of any use to me now?”

HEATH J HOWARD