Jason Huggins has been coding since grade school.

The Senior Software Developer on ReCollect’s Platform Team first dipped his toes into the field decades ago when he coded Tic-tac-toe on the Texas Instruments TI-99A his godfather bought him, he says.

“I figured out a bit of coding back then, and then after that — it kind of just stuck.”

When his grade school days were coming to a close, his family got a PC, and “(I) started doing some programming then, too,” he says.

Since October 2018, Huggins has enjoyed his work with Routeware, on the ReCollect side, monitoring systems, improving team communication, keeping servers running, migrating systems, doing a lot of reliability work, running point on mobile builds, sharing his expertise with his coworkers and more.

At ReCollect, his coworkers create the company’s apps. “When (an app is) code-ready, then I make sure that it’s ready for deployment,” he says. Alltold, he says, “we release about 300 Android apps and about 300 iOS apps.” Each operating system has different variables from updates to licensing agreements to version changes.

“It’s constantly going, so it’s one of the things that keeps us on our toes,” he says.

But it’s work he has been studying and honing for most of his life. Huggins earned an Honours Bachelor of Science in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of Toronto, and has since held a variety of roles in training, web and app development, and more.

“I just had a knack for the full-stack kind of thing,” he says. “I understood how the logic worked; I understood how the database stuff worked.”

He took that knowledge and melded it together with the world of networks and such, which has culminated with his work in DevOps, a sort of combination of the processes of software development, IT work and the like.

Huggins says he had attended meetups for DevOps groups in Toronto, and began a DevOps group of his own in Halifax when he moved to Nova Scotia around 2016. Huggins says groups such as these are all about sharing knowledge, networking and helping developers communicate and work better together.

During his time hosting the DevOps group in Halifax, a fellow group member told him about a job posting in software development at ReCollect, “and it looked great,” Huggins said.

“I was already working remote for my company,” he says, adding that he was the only remote employee while others were in-office. At ReCollect, “the fact that we were all remote meant we were dealing with the same problems, and I felt like a weight lifted when I actually moved here,” he says. “It was pretty fantastic.”

Joining a “greener” company was a perk, too. His work at ReCollect has given him a deeper understanding of the solid waste and recycling world, he says, as well as some insights into how he can make better use of unwanted materials.

“In my own life, I’ve always kind of thought about a lot of these greener aspects,” he says. “I don’t like to waste a lot.”

He sees himself as a materialist — but not the kind of materialist who wants to acquire more and more items. “There’s another type of materialist that sees the value in the material, and wants all that material to be used properly without wasting it,” he says. “I kind of see myself in a bit of that camp.”

And his home on an acreage of land has provided him the perfect space to do so. Huggins and his wife, Tara, wanted to live more rurally, he says, so together with their son, Max, they moved out of the city. Now, they have nine chickens, one rooster and a hugelkultur garden, a centuries-old, 25-year “lasagna gardening concept” where you layer wooden planks (to create carbon) with yard waste, food scraps, and for Huggins, chicken manure, which generates a nutrient-rich garden space over time, he says.

Then, “you grow food out of it.”

Raising chickens and cultivating this type of garden has helped Huggins and his family manage materials that would otherwise go to waste. Take kitchen scraps, for example. “I’ll see what goes to the chickens; I’ll see what goes into the compost, and then I always try to keep furthering how that stuff can be used and broken down,” he says.

He also has plans to plant a clover field, which will not only prevent erosion around his garden, but will help develop nitrogen-rich soil inside the garden, too, through its clippings.

When he isn’t at work or tending to the gardens and chickens, Huggins is active with his family. His wife, Tara, homeschools their son, which provides the whole family with a lot of outdoor play — which is easy when you’ve got an acreage of wooded land to work with.

The lifestyle he has created for himself provides him time to work inside on his computer and pop outdoors to work his land — a wonderful, layered balance similar to the environment he creates inside his garden.

“I’m really getting into the gardening stuff, now,” he says.

4 Fast Facts about Jason

If you have superpowers, what would they be? My son tells me “being lucky.”

If you were hot sauce, what level would you rate yourself from 1 to 10, and why? My favorite hot sauce is, I make it now … is with the Trinidadian pepper, Scotch bonnets. … It tastes like home.

People on planet Earth should: Think about the planet’s future.

The world could do without: There’s a war going on, now. There’s so much polarization with people. That’s a hard one for me to answer. … It’s more like the world could do with patient listening, and do with less rash action.