Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

Chapter 152 Dialogue with Ogawa

In the dead of night at Qihang Technology, the lights hummed, and the office area was filled with the mixed smell of instant noodles and ham sausages.

Bai Yuhang came out of the CEO's office to get some water, and paused for a moment as he passed the technology department.

Most of the people at the workstations were taking turns resting; some were slumped over their desks, while others were huddled in their chairs, snoring with their necks tilted to the side.

Only the lamp in the far corner was still lit. Wang Xiaochuan sat hunched over, his black-rimmed glasses almost touching the screen. His ten fingers were typing rapidly on the keyboard, and next to him was a notebook with curled edges, covered with handwritten architectural diagrams.

Zhang Jian woke up at some point, and came over with a cup of cold tea, lowering his voice.

"President Bai, look at Chuan'er." Zhang Jian gestured with a hint of surprise on his face. "I told him to rest just now, but he said he wasn't sleepy. He turned around and rewrote the exception handling module for the mobile interface. I looked at it, and it's much cleaner than my original version. The key thing is that this kid has only been here for less than half a day, but he's already got a pretty good grasp of the ins and outs of our system."

Bai Yuhang didn't say anything, but leaned against the partition and took a few more glances.

Wang Xiaochuan's coding habits are quite interesting. He types a bit, then stops, stares at the screen for a few seconds, and his lips move slightly, as if he's having a conversation with the code.

Then delete a few lines, rewrite, delete again, and rewrite again.

It was polished repeatedly, like carving something.

"And your age?" Bai Yuhang asked.

"He's about our age. He was admitted to Tsinghua University through a special admission program, like a gifted youth program. He's a few months younger than us, I think." Zhang Jian took a sip of his iced tea. "He's from the Computer Science Department at Tsinghua. He was being directed by a bunch of laymen at Sohu to make games using drawing software. Who could stand that? This kid is really skilled, and he's got a good personality. He does whatever he's asked to do, doesn't pick and choose, and doesn't waste time. I worked with him for an afternoon, and we got along really well."

Bai Yuhang nodded.

In his previous life, Wang Xiaochuan was the creator of Sogou search engine, the founder and CEO of Baichuan Intelligence, the senior vice president and CTO of Sohu Group, and a legendary figure in the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University.

At that moment, he was just a student with messy hair, huddled in a corner of Qihang Technology, quietly coding.

"Chuan'er." Bai Yuhang walked over and pulled up a chair next to him to sit down.

Wang Xiaochuan was startled. He turned around and saw Bai Yuhang. He quickly pulled his hands back from the keyboard and awkwardly pushed up his glasses.

"Mr. Bai, I was just optimizing the exception handling logic of the Mobile Dream Network recharge module. The version written by Brother Zhang had a little redundant judgment when it was triggered frequently. I wanted to simplify it without changing the core logic."

"Don't be nervous, I'm not here to check up on you." Bai Yuhang waved his hand. "You made the right changes. I saw the redundancy. I've been wanting to clean it up for a while, but I haven't had the time. Come in and sit down for a bit, let's chat."

Wang Xiaochuan was stunned for a moment, then quickly stood up and followed Bai Yuhang to the CEO's office.

As he passed Zhang Jian's workstation, Zhang Jian winked at him and whispered, "Chuan'er, Boss Bai wants to have a private talk with you. This is a good thing, don't be afraid."

Wang Xiaochuan nodded, clenching the sweat from his palms.

The office door closed, and Bai Yuhang pointed to the sofa. "Sit wherever you like, don't be shy."

Wang Xiaochuan sat down on the sofa, only half of his buttocks touching it, his back ramrod straight.

Bai Yuhang poured him a cup of warm water and pushed it over, then picked up the purple clay teapot and refilled his own tea.

"How long did you work at Sohu?"

"About a month." Wang Xiaochuan took the water glass but didn't drink. "When Chen Yizhou first arrived, he was recruiting. I went because Sohu seemed like a big brand, but once I got there, I realized something was wrong. Half of the tech team was slacking off, and the other half was involved in office politics. There weren't many people who could actually write code."

Did you participate in the front-end and back-end development of 5Q Campus Network?

"I participated." Wang Xiaochuan's expression was a bit complicated. "The homepage and community module were built by me and a few classmates from Tsinghua University. Later, Chen Yizhou insisted on adding a farm game, and asked the graphic designer to use drawing software to create the materials. The code logic was modified by a group of people who didn't understand technology, and in the end, no one could understand it. I proposed several solutions, but they were all rejected."

Bai Yuhang listened without replying, and picked up his teacup to take a sip.

Wang Xiaochuan seemed to have opened up, his voice tinged with frustration. "President Bai, do you know what I find most unbearable? It's not that the technical direction is wrong, it's that no one on the entire team, from top to bottom, cares about the product. Chen Yizhou only cares about how to make the data look good, Lao Zhao, a veteran employee of Sohu, only cares about how to brew health tea, and the rest of the people only care about how to slack off during work hours. I'm the only one modifying the code, like I'm performing a solo act."

So you left.

"What are we waiting for if we don't leave? To wait for the Buddha-light dog to be consecrated again?" Wang Xiaochuan realized his words were a bit sarcastic and quickly shut up.

Bai Yuhang chuckled. "Alright, let's put the Sohu thing behind us. Let's talk about something serious."

He pulled his laptop out of the drawer, opened the programming software, and showed it several complex logic flowcharts drawn in VISI0, then turned it around and pushed it in front of Wang Xiaochuan.

The notebook contained a system architecture diagram, not the existing architecture of HaiNei.com, but a larger and more complex underlying framework.

The system includes a distributed data storage layer, a real-time message middleware, and a horizontally scalable load balancing cluster. Arrows are used to indicate the data flow and disaster recovery logic between each module.

Wang Xiaochuan's gaze fell on the computer laptop, and his pupils visibly dilated.

He subconsciously pushed his glasses up and leaned forward, almost pressing his face against the screen.

He traced the arrows on the architecture diagram with his finger, muttering to himself.

"This is—a distributed message bus? Each node operates independently, faults are automatically isolated, and the data layer uses consistent hashing for sharding—" His finger hovered over a module labeled "asynchronous callback," and his voice rose a half-octave, "Mr. Bai, with this design—are you planning to have every business line run on the same underlying system?"

"That's right." Bai Yuhang leaned back in his chair. "The current architecture of HaiNei.com can support 20 to 30 million users without any problem. But what if the user base reaches 50 million or 100 million? The current system is just a tin house. It's enough for a few people, but it will collapse if it houses 10,000. What I need is a reinforced concrete foundation, so that no matter what kind of building is built on top, it won't collapse."

Wang Xiaochuan straightened up, his eyes shining brightly.

"Mr. Bai, if your system can truly be implemented, no other company in China can currently achieve this." He pointed to the message middleware module on his laptop. "But how do we solve the throughput bottleneck here? Once the message backlog on a single node exceeds the threshold—"

"That's why I called you in." Bai Yuhang pushed the laptop towards Wang Xiaochuan again, looking at him. "Zhang Jian handles the daily business development with his team with ease. But the restructuring of the underlying architecture requires a pure technical mind to lead the design. You felt that no one at Sohu understood technology, but that won't happen at Qihang. Here, everyone speaks with code."

Wang Xiaochuan tightened his grip on the water glass.

This afternoon, after looking at Qihang's codebase, he had an indescribable feeling, like someone who had been playing football in the mud for years suddenly stepping onto a real green field.

"Mr. Bai, to be honest," Wang Xiaochuan pushed up his glasses and looked Bai Yuhang in the eye, a rare occurrence for him, "I still have classes to teach at Tsinghua University, so I can only work part-time right now. But I'm dedicating all my evenings and weekends to the mobile interface and underlying reconstruction projects, making sure I don't hold them back."

"Don't neglect your studies; a degree is more important than anything else." Bai Yuhang stood up, patted him on the shoulder, and said, "At Qihang, as long as you write good code, you don't need to worry about anything else."

Wang Xiaochuan stood up, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.

"Mr. Bai, there's something else I'd like to ask."

"explain."

"Some of the module names you marked on your architecture diagram use terms I've never seen before. One is called a microservice gateway, and another is called container orchestration. I've searched through all the publicly available technical papers from MIT and Stanford, and I couldn't find either of these concepts." Wang Xiaochuan stared at Bai Yuhang, his eyes filled with the pure curiosity of a tech geek facing the unknown. "Where did you learn that from?"

Bai Yuhang paused for a moment while holding the teacup.

These two concepts took shape in the industry around 2011, and even later, with Docker not emerging until 2013.

When he was drawing the architecture diagram, his ingrained technical thinking from his previous life led him to casually label it.

"I figured it out myself." Bai Yuhang's face remained expressionless. "The idea isn't fully developed yet, so I'm just drawing it for fun. I'll organize my thoughts and show them to you when I have time."

Wang Xiaochuan nodded with some doubt, but didn't ask any further questions.

The tech world is never short of geniuses, and the code written by this person has already proven everything.