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Huỳnh Nhân Quốc
Huỳnh Nhân Quốc

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Searching for the Core Value in My Programming Journey

#webdev #passion #go #journey

It All Started with a Spark

Almost ten years ago, I witnessed something that changed my life — a friend working as a freelance web developer.

I didn’t understand what he was doing. I just saw lines of code dancing across his screen and heard him talk about clients, projects, and earning money online.

That moment lit a spark. I opened Blogspot, started tinkering, and slowly realized that programming was basically writing code that made information appear on a screen. Simple, but magical.

Searching for Direction in University

When I entered university, I began to shape my identity as an IT student.

In those early days, C# fascinated me. Writing tiny applications that calculated formulas and displayed numbers made me feel like I was bending reality a little.

In the university library, I even wrote my first thesis project in C# — clumsy, basic, but deeply personal.

I was like a child who had just found a new world. I knew what passion was, but I didn’t yet understand what I was truly pursuing.

Discovering New Technologies

Then came WPF, and with it, the beauty of user interfaces. I fell in love with how design could make code feel alive.

But spending hours adjusting UI elements felt exhausting. So I asked myself:

“Is there a way to write code once and run it everywhere?”
That question led me to Xamarin, though I quickly realized how hard it was to learn alone. I even wondered, “Why do we need XAML when we already have HTML?”

A naive question — but it led me to Ionic.

With Ionic, I started building mobile apps and learning how to manage data. Google Sheets became my backend playground. I discovered that everything revolved around JSON — and one day, I realized JSON wasn’t just data… it was an API.

From there, I dove into NoSQL and SQL, opening a whole new chapter in understanding how data truly works.

Learning and Growing Along the Way

After exploring Ionic and Angular, I joined a small team in Saigon called eye-solution.

Working alongside other developers taught me more than any tutorial ever could. But I also realized how much I still didn’t know.

Eventually, I moved back to my hometown, focusing on self-learning and building my own projects.

Through these experiments, I learned something valuable — Angular could build powerful apps, but it wasn’t SEO-friendly.

Static websites, on the other hand, performed better on Google.

By early 2019, a friend from my hometown introduced me to Golang. He needed a remote developer, and I was curious.

That’s when I started learning Go, cloud scripting, and even pointers (which, surprisingly, made sense!).

I realized Go was simple yet elegant — but I still felt slow in catching up with new technologies.

Building My Own Projects and Finding My Voice

After several failed job hunts, I turned inward — building my own products.

I combined everything I’d learned from Angular and Golang, but again, SEO was my bottleneck.

Then, in 2019, I discovered the idea of auto-generated code.

If you know ChatGPT, you’ll get the idea — it’s a generative model.

My experiment, however, was about auto-generating APIs from data tables.

That realization changed everything.

The deeper I went, the more I realized Angular couldn’t satisfy my SEO needs.

So I explored JAMstack, GatsbyJS, NuxtJS, and Next.js.

Could Angular coexist with JAMstack? I had to find out.

Around that time, I discovered Gohugo, a framework built with Golang.

A few friends and I started a small project together, but then the pandemic hit.

Everything slowed down. I went home again — feeling lost, but still dreaming.

Reconnecting with Purpose

I asked myself:

“What am I really searching for?”
The answer came slowly: I wanted to build a website platform to manage and process data — something elegant, efficient, and truly mine.

So I started building it, with Golang as my constant companion.

I experimented with Rust and Vlang, but in the end, Golang felt like home.

My goal was simple: create a platform to manage clients, like WordPress or Shopify, but from scratch.

Even if it never became huge, at least I’d make a living doing what I loved — building on the web.

Where I Am Now

Today, my system has evolved into a fully functional website platform, and I’m expanding it toward business management systems.

All the questions I once asked have become the motivation behind my work.

My ultimate goal?

To build a multi-platform application — user-friendly, capable of processing diverse data types, and as beautiful as a modern website.

The indie journey isn’t about speed — it’s about direction.

Every mistake, every detour, every quiet night of debugging brings you closer to your truth as a builder.
And that truth, for me, lies somewhere between a simple Go function and a dream that never stops compiling.

Today, I can finally look back with gratitude and forward with hope.

This journey isn’t just mine — it’s a small reflection of what many indie developers go through when they chase meaning through code.

NOTES

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