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Huỳnh Nhân Quốc
Huỳnh Nhân Quốc

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Experience, Control, and Context — Things You Can’t Just “Vibe” Your Way Through

#webdev #seo #go #uxdesign

🧭 “Design is how it works.”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

— Steve Jobs
Recently, as AI seeps into everything, I’ve noticed more developers “vibe coding” — coding by feel, by flow, by style.

And yet, that quote from Steve Jobs hits harder than ever.

Because a website — or any product — isn’t what you see.

It’s how it functions.

🎨 A Good Website Isn’t Just Pretty

I’ve built — and seen — countless sites that look fast, sleek, and modern… but are hollow inside.

They look great on the surface, but there’s no depth.

And that’s when I realized: a site’s real value doesn’t come from its UI, but from how clearly it communicates value.

From my experience:

  • UI is only 20–40% of the total value.
  • The rest is SEO and functionality — how it actually works. If you’re building a web app for internal use, sure — functionality comes first. But if it’s a marketing website without SEO, it’s like a store hidden in a dark alley — beautiful, but invisible.

🤖 SEO Isn’t Technical — It’s Communication

After writing and optimizing dozens of websites, I’ve learned one thing:

SEO isn’t a technical checklist.

SEO is UX for bots.

Just like humans, bots need clarity.

They need logical structure, clean flow, and meaningful hierarchy.

You need to speak Google’s language — in both your code and your content.

I’ve built crawlers. Broken crawlers. Studied how they read.

And here’s the truth:

If Google doesn’t understand you, you don’t exist.

AI works the same way.

Without well-structured, SEO-friendly data, AI is just a kid trained in a sandbox.

Developers are the ones building the real-world data that “educates” AI.

💡 UX ≠ UI

The term UX gets abused everywhere.

So many UI designers call themselves UX designers.

But true UX comes from customer experience, not color palettes.

UX isn’t “beautiful layout” or “balanced contrast.”

UX is when the user finds what they need without asking.

A good system doesn’t need onboarding.

It doesn’t need explanations.

It just works.

Because when UX fails, no amount of beautiful UI can save it.

A bad flow is still a maze — even if you decorate the walls.

🧠 Programming Isn’t About Running — It’s About Control

“Programming isn’t about how it looks or runs. It’s about how you control it.”

— Huỳnh Nhân Quốc
After a decade of coding, I finally realized:

Programming isn’t about making things work.

It’s about knowing why and how they work.

I once built a smooth, modern system — powered by a dozen third-party libraries.

Then, the night before launch, it crashed.

Why?

Because one dependency updated overnight.

That was the day I switched to Golang.

I rebuilt everything from scratch — no third-party randomness, no blind trust.

I wanted to understand every line, every error, every process.

From small CLI tools to a self-built framework — all under my control.

⚙️ Context > Framework

I’ve learned all the trendy frameworks.

Then I went back to Vanilla JS and Golang.

Back to simplicity.

Back to clarity.

A great developer isn’t the one who knows every framework —

It’s the one who understands context:

How the system runs. Who the users are. What the platform needs.

When you understand context, you don’t just make code run —

You make it sustainable.

⚡ Speed Doesn’t Beat Understanding

I’ve seen posts bragging “I built an AI model in 48 hours” or “Launched a chat app in 3 days.”

But I always wonder:

Where’s the experience?

Where’s the security?

Where’s retry, reconnect, fallback logic?

Or was it just an MVP for investors?

I spent months building what seemed “unnecessary”:

Custom hash functions.

Unique ID generators.

Micro components for SEO.

But those “slow” things made my systems stronger — and understandable by both humans and bots.

I started with nothing but a 1-core, 1GB VPS.

From that, I built a website that made it into Vietnam’s Top 100 eCommerce sites.

Not because I had fancy tech — but because I knew what I was building, who I was building for, and how it all connected.

🌿 You Can’t “Vibe” Experience, Control, or Context

You can vibe in design.

You can vibe in creative flow.

But you can’t vibe your way through context, control, or real users.

And when you master those —

You won’t need fancy frameworks or flashy stacks.

You’ll only need experience, clarity, and a clear purpose.

NOTES

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