Layout: Control replacing caps lock is great as a programmer. After trying out different types of mechanical keyboards, I chose the HHKB because: John: My daily driver keyboard is the HHKB Professional 2. HHKB: That is a great way to learn! Speaking of sharing, can you share with us about your experience with HHKB? Others who see my content bring up better alternatives and share their experiences. Every time I share something, I actually end up learning something. John: Sharing something, be it a blog post or tweet might seem like I’m trying to teach something.

HHKB: How valuable has the programming community been in helping you learn more about what you are interested in? (That blog post in particular got me connected with a CEO that I looked up to because his company ran into the same problem!) The least I can do is spend a few extra minutes writing it up to save time for the next person. I spend countless hours banging my head trying to figure it out. There have been problems (like sending Slack images in Go) where there were no existing answers. I’ve shared this page dozens of times now and it has hundreds of thousands of views!Īnother use for my blog is to help others. I wrote a blog post on how to create animated product updates after being asked how I made one at the startup I worked at. A blog post is great for questions that require lengthy responses. I also use my blog as a way to answer questions that I’m asked about often. Writing posts forces me to thoroughly understand topics and creates a reference to return to later. John: I started my programming blog as a way to deepen my own learning. HHKB: We noticed you also maintain a blog page on programming? Tell us a little about that. Being able to exceed a user’s expectations is pure joy for me. I switched to Design Engineering because I find a lot of joy in creating exceptional user experiences. The time we are not coding is split between project management and designing. The code we write is usually frontend code. This is a role where we code for the majority of the time. We make a good experience into a great one. Design Engineering is different from Software Engineering in that it focuses very intently on the user experience. After a while, I transitioned to the Design Engineer role. John: I started at Vercel as a Software Engineer. HHKB: What type of role do you currently occupy at your job? That time saved allows people to solve even harder problems. Your team of 10 engineers now saves 20 hours every day, 140 hours every week, 7,280 hours every year.

Say I spend 40 hours building a new tool that saves someone 2 hours every day. Your team can focus on solving your business problems while Vercel will make sure your application is available around the world, is fast, and is secured.īuilding developer tools is very interesting for me.

The way Vercel makes money is by being your devops and infrastructure team. One of our most popular tools is an opensource framework to build websites called Next.js. We're all about creating tools that make it easier for other companies to build stuff on the web. HHKB: Where do you currently work and what interested you in that company? There was something about problem-solving with code that was just way more fun than I'd ever imagined. I joined a team to build a game and fell in love with programming. As a broke college freshman, you go where there’s free food and swag. I went to the hackathon because I was promised free food and swag. I started off studying mechanical engineering but switched to computer science after going to a hackathon. I went to the University of California Riverside for my undergraduate. John: I’m a first-generation Vietnamese born and raised in California.

HHKB: What got you interested in programming? John: Hi, I’m John Pham and I’m a 26-year-old Lead Design Engineer in Seattle. HHKB: Hi John, tell us a little about yourself. His journey is not only inspiring to those wanting to enter the programming field, but also shows that programming can be a thriving community of shared knowledge and progress. had the privilege to talk with Design Engineer and HHKB fan John Pham to learn more about him and why he loves Happy Hacking.

Pok3r with hhkb layout