about

Thiên Ân

I'm a Vietnamese developer living in Paris — studying at an engineering school, and currently doing my first internship as a frontend dev at a startup. I go by patatian online — short for Phan Tran Thien An, which accidentally sounds like patate (French for potato).

I spend my days building with React and TypeScript — and my nights slowly getting humbled by algorithms and infrastructure.

This blog is my patati patata — a little bit of everything, sometimes useful, sometimes not.

now

Learning the parts of the stack I've been avoiding. Systems design, backend patterns, DSA. Turns out there's a lot of computer science underneath all the React.

Also building this blog, which counts.

why this exists

I like talking about my life, sharing what I know, and hearing what other people think. Writing helps me figure things out — sometimes it's a deep dive into a data structure, sometimes it's a thought about living between two cultures, sometimes neither.

No real theme. No schedule. No promises. That's the point.

the in-between

Grew up in Vietnam, ended up in France — not because I had a plan, but because someone gave me a chance and I took it. Three years in, still figuring things out, but that's fine.

Some posts here will be in Vietnamese. Some in English. Occasionally both.

things I like

Good coffee and matcha latte. Manga at odd hours. Sport when my body cooperates. Photography as an excuse to slow down and look at things properly.