Back to the prime of life

Chapter 151: No retreat is better than a chance to see the future
As in previous years, schools began preparing for summer vacation around June 6th.

However, this summer is different from previous years, and the reason is naturally the Olympic Games that will open in August. Now wherever Lu Changge goes, he can see the countdown, and the song "Beijing Welcomes You" is also playing in the streets and alleys.

Looking back on his previous life, he was just a 20-year-old passionate young man, and like everyone else, he was extremely excited about this event.

At that time, I never thought that I would have the opportunity to experience it again.

When I think about it carefully, the two years since my rebirth have passed very quickly, and my future life is destined to be different from my previous life.

Unfortunately, the Olympic Games were very important to the Hailan Bay Swimming Pool, so he couldn't leave. However, Lu Changge felt it necessary to let his parents go there once.

The classic science fiction movie "Interstellar" puts forward a very interesting concept, that is, love can travel through time and space.

After rebirth, the mysterious concepts in the movie have a more realistic meaning to Lu Changge, that is, no matter how time and space change, no matter whether he is an ordinary city office worker or a businessman with some wealth in this life.

His parents have always been like roots, allowing him to look back no matter how far he goes, even if they are separated by time and space.

Young people don’t understand this feeling. Only when the old house is empty can they appreciate the significance of their parents’ presence.

For this matter, Lu Changge went to find Wang Hongcheng again, and he was willing to pay a little more.

However, when he contacted his parents, both Mr. and Mrs. Lu expressed that it was too expensive, so they didn't want to go, and no matter what he said, they still seemed reluctant.

In the end, Lu Changge had no choice but to say that he had already bought the plane tickets for them and booked the hotel for them. The money had been spent, and it would be a waste if they didn’t go.

In the end, it was through this method that we were able to invite them both.

After it was done, Lu Changge felt much more relieved.

In July, after the summer vacation officially began, the free swimming event of Hailan Bay Swimming Pool began. The entire swimming pool was packed with people during the free period every morning.

Zuo Shuya became more and more skilled. At her suggestion, two more screens were added to the lobby of the HaiLan Bay Swimming Pool to play various Olympic promotional videos and display slogans cheering for the Chinese swimming team.

Under the influence of the Olympic atmosphere, people's enthusiasm for swimming has also increased. Driven by this enthusiasm, they "accidentally" walked into the swimming pool and swam for two hours seemingly for free.

But after swimming, the first thing is that your children can't walk. As for children, they may not be willing to study or learn musical instruments. But swimming is another form of physical education class. Which student doesn't like physical education class?
Secondly, some parents also want their children to learn one more sports skill.

Parents from Jiangzhou Foreign Language School still have a mentality of "looking at others and comparing with others", that is, if other children learn, my family cannot fall behind!
Other families can afford this money, but we can't?

As more people come to the swimming pool, things become complicated, and his financial requirements are very standardized, so if he is absent for a long time, it will directly affect normal operations.

So starting from the beginning of July, Lu Changge was in HaiLan Bay in the morning and in the Taobao store in the afternoon, so that the progress of developing the iPhoneOS software was affected.

On July 7, Chi Yongsheng, who had always been "passive", called him urgently from Shandong.

"Changge! Have you been following Apple news?!"

Lu Changge thought something had happened. "What's wrong, Teacher Chi? You sound anxious and excited."

Chi Yongsheng spoke very quickly, as if someone was trying to stop him from speaking. "Apple has launched the App Store. Didn't you see it?"

There really aren't many reports on this in China.

After all, this thing was not launched in China until 2010, so it has nothing to do with us. Apple didn’t sell many phones either, so who would pay attention?

Maybe only people like Chi Yongsheng, who are technology fans to a certain extent, will pay attention to it.

Of course, Lu Changge also deeply understood the significance of this matter.

Now that he has made a little money, other projects that can make a little money cannot excite him.

The only difference is this. As long as you are lucky enough, it is not difficult to dig up a mine worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

So he stood up from where he was sitting on the toilet, "Really?!"

"What's true or false? You'll know if you pay attention to the Internet." Chi Yongsheng changed the subject and teased him again, "Don't tell me, I used to think you were so motivated and just wanted to get rich. Now it seems that you have good vision!"

Lu Changge curled his lips, but his words were still polite. "It's mainly because of Teacher Chi's inspiration! How about this, I'll contact him right away, and we can meet up?"

"You guys go ahead and touch it. I'm at my father-in-law's house in Shandong now. I bought a train ticket tonight to go back."

"Okay." Lu Changge didn't listen carefully, but after thinking about it for a while, he felt that Old Chi was a little excited. "Teacher Chi, you came back overnight? This, there is no rush right now, right?"

Chi Yongsheng said: "It's urgent, I just want to find a reason to slip away."

Hehe, he is probably a son-in-law from another place and is very bored.

Otherwise, no matter how excited I was, it wouldn't be so long.

Of course, this in itself is indeed great news.

After more than half a year of study, Lu Changge is no longer the technical novice he used to be. He now knows how to use the OC language and is familiar with the development environment of Xcode, and the latest version 3.0.

Although I am not proficient in back-end development and UI design, at least I know what they are.

More importantly, he basically understood the main technical difficulties of an instant messaging software. When working, one must first find out where the problem lies.

For example, the instant message push function requires the development of a prototype system for Apple's push notification service; there is also the communication protocol, which will most likely require secondary development based on an open source framework protocol.

There is another key point.

It's not the 4G era now, so the data saving algorithm is more critical. It's impossible to send a text message, which consumes a lot of data.

Furthermore, the voice function he envisioned is limited by the EDGE network speed and will most likely not be implemented in the first generation version.

These are the results of his learning.

In addition, because he was living in 2008, he had a more real feeling, and one result was that he lowered his expectations on this matter.

Due to the limited functions, the early software interface was not so smooth, and the sales of Apple phones did not soar as they are now. Symbian still ranked first. It was not until 2009 that China Unicom introduced Apple phones for sale in China.

Therefore, even if the product is released, the user scale will not necessarily grow explosively. Moreover, since his entire team is in China, although some means can be used to release the app abroad, there will definitely be various difficulties in the process.

It might even force him to give up halfway. But Lu Changge didn't give up. He fully anticipated the possible difficulties and was prepared for a long battle.

And the key is to reserve technology, talents and experience, so that even if the first business venture fails, when the mobile Internet wave really comes in 2010, his team will be the one with the fastest response and the strongest combat effectiveness.

In addition, the other two people in their three-person study group, Yu Na and Hui Chuankun, are also quite serious.

Hui Chuankun has always left Lu Changge with the impression of being a bookworm. It is almost certain that this guy will be a senior programmer in the future.

However, it would be wrong to ignore Yu Na because of this. This girl is not the type who works hard, but she is interested in it, so when she first met Lu Changge, she showed a technical level that was higher than ordinary people.

No matter how obscure and boring others think it is, there are people who like it.

So throughout the first half of the year, the two of them did not stop.

The next day, Chi Yongsheng rushed back overnight and went straight to the garage.

Not only that, when Lu Changge arrived, he found that he had brought an older woman with some wrinkles on her face.

The woman was taller than Chi Yongsheng, probably over 1.7 meters, with broad shoulders. She looked a bit strong and had some flesh on her face. Her hair was short, not too long, and she looked fierce overall.

"Here I am." Chi Yongsheng stood up and said, "Changge, come quickly, I'll bring someone to you today."

Lu Changge looked at her, and she also looked at Lu Changge.

"Zhou Shuang, she was my graduate school classmate back then. She later studied in the United States and is much more capable than me."

"Hello." The woman stood up and shook hands. Perhaps because she was tall and strong, she gave people a sense of oppression.

"Hello." Lu Changge shook hands politely and then looked away. "Teacher Chi, how did you find such an important person?"

Chi Yongsheng explained with a wry smile, "I wanted to come over, but I couldn't convince her. Today I invited her to come over to have a discussion with us. If that good thing really happened, I would have told you last night."

Zhou Shuang looked strong, but her voice was gentle and elegant. She said, "Old Chi did tell me a lot and tried to persuade me to join you. I said I hadn't seen anything yet."

Lu Changge understood, "Teacher Chi was too excited yesterday."

Chi Yongsheng said: "I have indeed made a decision. I think I have to give it a try, otherwise I will regret it."

"Is this a joke?"

"Of course not, but I won't quit my job at the school so soon. It's not easy to work at home."

Never mind them. We have to recruit people anyway, and their current makeshift team is not enough.

Moreover, Lu Changge understood very well that only when you invested real money and started to work on it seriously, would others make the important decision to join you.

Otherwise, even Chi Yongsheng, who knew him very well, would not be willing to gamble his job with him.

So, get down to business and luck will follow.

"I saw the news this morning that Apple's second-generation iPhone 3G has officially been released. We're not among the first locations for sales, but I'll try to get a few units here. We'll need them for the final software testing."

Zhou Shuang also saw the Apple computers here. Chi Yongsheng told her that they were very determined, and from the current perspective, this should be beyond doubt.

Lu Changge didn't show too much enthusiasm towards this stranger, but just spoke seriously about his own business, "The launch of the App Store proves that my previous judgment was correct. In the future, various functional application software will occupy smartphones like Apple.

Apple has also repeatedly emphasized the need to promote the development of third-party application software stores, releasing the SDK in the first half of the year and the App Store in the second half of the year. This is very efficient because they know that more and more third-party software can enhance their competitiveness.

An obvious positive cycle logic has been formed.

Therefore, smartphones will definitely develop rapidly, and the user base will easily reach hundreds of millions. What we need to do is to provide software services to smartphone users, just as Microsoft provided software services to users in the PC era!

Because Zhou Shuang was there, Lu Changge said a few more words to sort out the original logic.

"I figured this out last year. The software we're targeting is the most commonly used instant messaging software. If we were only in the preparation phase before, then after today, we'll officially start working on it."

After planning and studying for so long, the specific path is already in his mind.

"I think we need to set an overall goal, which is to launch our app on the Apple App Store as soon as possible. I hope to complete it before the end of the year. Teacher Chi said he would join us, so now there are four of us. Today, the four of us will break down the goal. The previous small-scale efforts will end here. Once the goal is broken down, we must complete it step by step."

Chi Yongsheng is indeed very different. He has been fooled by Lu Changge for so long, and the launch of the app store has made him see the real trend.

"Changge, let me tell you." He spread out a piece of paper. "Before everything begins, I want to confirm one thing with you. You are the backbone of this matter, and you are also the initiator. I can only ask you this question."

Lu Changge nodded, "You go ahead."

"Zhou Shuang has worked at both Microsoft and Google. She's a more professional industry insider than I am, and I've discussed this with her. Even a small project like this would require at least $30 in investment. Considering we're based in China, launching our software overseas would involve facing various risks, including unknown policies, laws, and payment options. These risks would directly impact our subsequent financing."

The problem is obvious.

As the richest man here, how much money is Lu Changge willing to spend to do this?

Don’t start crying and wanting to give up just because you lost $20. Don’t even play in the first place.

But Lu Changge couldn't just tell them to do whatever they wanted, as he had plenty of money. That way, no one would feel any pressure.

The thrill of life hanging by a thread must be felt by everyone in order to stimulate people's potential.

After a moment of thought, he clenched his fists and feigned great determination. "I have $50 to fight for! I also opened a Taobao store, which brings in 10 RMB a month. If the time comes, I can add more!"

The latter part was used to show determination. 10 RMB is just over 1 USD, which is not enough. If you rely on this, you will basically be admitted to the ICU.

But even so, Chi Yongsheng was very surprised, and his tone became frivolous, "No, so much?! Then why would you do such a risky thing when your Taobao store is so profitable?"

Zhou Shuang was also curious about this question.

Lu Changge tapped the table with his knuckles, a spark in his eyes. He said something a little pretentiously, but it was true to his inner thoughts, "People are never satisfied. Having an income is indeed my way out, but no matter how prosperous the retreat is, it can't compare to the opportunity to stand on the crest of the wave and see the next twenty years!"

(End of this chapter)