Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

The Santana slowly came to a stop at the entrance of the university, its tires crunching over the remaining snow with a crisp sound.

Zhao Jianjun glanced back at Bai Yuhang, whose eyes were bloodshot, and pulled him back with the handbrake: "Brother, you should go upstairs and get some rest. Even though you're young and energetic, you're not made of iron. Listen to me, go back and get some sleep. If you ruin your health, all the money you earn will go to the hospital."

"Thanks, Brother Zhao. I'm not tired, but I still have to keep an eye on things. I'm still feeling the strain, so I can't sleep soundly." Bai Yuhang unbuckled his seatbelt but didn't get out of the car. He simply rolled down the window and waved to Yang Bo and Jiao Liwei in the back seat.

Yang Bo clutched the briefcase containing the licenses tightly in his arms, as if he were holding a newborn prince.

"Second brother, take this business license, financial seal, and legal representative seal back and lock them up. These are our lifeline. I'll keep the company seal for now. Saturday morning, print out the completed contract and come find me at New Century Internet Cafe. We'll go to Blue Speed ​​to finalize the agreed-upon contract." Bai Yuhang's voice was a little hoarse, but his reasoning was clear.

Yang Bo nodded emphatically: "Don't worry, the person is there and the certificate is there."

"Boss." Bai Yuhang leaned against the car door frame and looked at Jiao Liwei. "Go back and wake up Lao San, Lao Si, and Lao Qi. Tell them to wash their faces and come down quickly. I'll wait in the car. Also, the 100 yuan fee for each of them last night, we'll distribute it to everyone when we get back. Everyone worked hard all night and didn't have time for a get-together, so let's reward everyone first."

Jiao Liwei grinned and patted his bulging chest: "Got it, that's called 'an army marches on its stomach.' We'll head up first then."

Watching the two disappear into the campus, their backs showing fatigue yet excitement, Bai Yuhang finally looked away, closed the car window, adjusted the seat back, and sank into the backrest.

"Brother Zhao, I'll have to trouble you to wait a little longer. I'm going to take a ten-minute nap."

"Go to sleep." Zhao Jianjun turned the car heater up a notch and turned off the radio.

Almost the instant he closed his eyes, Bai Yuhang's consciousness went blank.

He was startled awake by a noise from the car window. He jolted awake and instinctively reached for the official seal in his pocket, only relaxing when his hand touched the hard box. Turning his head, he saw three large faces pressed against the car window, squeezed together and somewhat distorted, grinning and laughing into the car.

Zhang Jian had messy hair, Wan Lianghao was yawning, and Zhang Qingheng was holding two hot vegetable buns in his hand, about to hand them to him.

"Holy crap, that scared the hell out of me." Bai Yuhang rubbed his stiff face, rolled down the car window, and asked, "Are you three here to collect a debt or to take my life?"

"We're here to make a revolution!" Zhang Jian leaned in, full of energy. "The boss handed out the money, and seeing those red bills scared away all my sleepiness. Let's go, Sixth Brother, we have to figure out our music station today!"

"Get in the car."

Back in the innermost room of the New Century Internet Cafe, the smoke-filled private room reserved for Qihang Company, Bai Yuhang didn't rush to sit down. He first went to the restroom and splashed his face with cold water. The icy water dripped down his collar, instantly clearing his head.

He sat back in his swivel chair and turned on his computer. He closed the Visio flowchart showing the core recommendation algorithm for the "Alumni Directory" with his mouse; tonight he was going to lead a few of his buddies in a full-scale effort to develop and debug the music website.

Although the main focus right now is the music website, the background processes running in his mind never stop. Over twenty years of product development experience in his previous life have instilled in him this almost instinctive thinking habit—while typing the line of code in front of him, his mind is already working on the implementation of the next product's features.

The difficulty in creating alumni directories lies not in the technology, but in understanding human nature.

How do you get users to willingly fill in their real information to become users? How do you get users to spontaneously bring their classmates in? How do you create viral marketing? How do you derive second-degree connections from first-degree connections? How do you design the threshold for "spying" on other people's homepages? How do you design the information flow algorithm and permissions pushed to users? These questions were constantly flipping and piecing together in his mind like Tetris blocks.

If it were his younger self, a freshman in college, he would have been too focused on the immediate details and just wanted to cram in all the features. But now, at 45 and a product director at a major company's overseas branch, he understands all too well: technology is the skeleton, but product thinking is the soul. No matter how fancy the code is, if the user isn't happy using it, it's just a pile of crap.

"Third brother, stop for a moment." Bai Yuhang pulled his thoughts back and slid his chair closer to Zhang Jian's screen.

The screen is filled with densely packed scraping logs.

"This efficiency is unacceptable." Bai Yuhang pointed to several lines of jumping characters. "Are you trying to work it out with a single thread? If you encounter a slow-responding origin server, the entire queue will be stuck here. Add a timeout check; if there's no response after three seconds, skip it and put it in the retry queue. If that doesn't work, consider concurrency; it will consume more resources but be more efficient. What we need is quality, but also speed; we're not just struggling with a dead link."

Zhang Jian slapped his forehead: "That's right! You're right. I was so focused on catching them all in order that I forgot about that."

"Fourth brother, let me take a look at your front-end page." Bai Yuhang then turned to Wan Lianghao.

The page is very elegant, fully inheriting the "simple" style of Qihang Navigation. There are no fancy backgrounds, only clear rankings and search boxes.

"The design is nice, but this..." Bai Yuhang pointed to the download button, "This button is too small. Users' mouse sensitivity isn't high, you need to make it so that users can click it at a glance. Enlarge it by at least one size, change the color to a bright orange, and add a small 'preview' play icon next to it. Don't make users guess what it's for, just shove it right in their face."

Wan Lianghao nodded repeatedly and immediately began modifying the page's CSS styles.

Finally, Bai Yuhang looked at Zhang Qingheng, the seventh brother, who was huddled in the corner. The kid was worrying about the logic of the ranking list, his brows furrowed so deeply they could trap a fly.

"Seventh Brother, don't be afraid of making mistakes." Bai Yuhang walked over and patted him on the shoulder. "This ranking page is for you to practice on. Remember one principle: popularity is king. Don't care about the release time, just see who gets the most clicks, and that's who ranks first. Even if it's an old song from the 80s, as long as 10,000 people click on it today, it's No.1 today. Go ahead and write boldly. Don't worry about the number of clicks being inflated now, we'll talk about that when we do iterative updates later."

Zhang Qingheng looked up, flattered, and gripped the mouse tighter: "I understand, Sixth Brother, I... I'll give it a try."

"It's not a test, it's a must-win." Bai Yuhang sat back down. "We don't have much time left. The Geek Alliance may be stupid, but they're not all idiots. This weekend, the music site must go live. We need to give this internet another boost."

After arranging everything, Bai Yuhang lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. The smoke dissipated in front of the screen. He squinted, looking at his busy colleagues, a smile playing on his lips, almost dreamy.

This is what entrepreneurship should be like. It's not about sitting in an office building drinking coffee and holding PowerPoint meetings, indulging in agile development, endless meetings and paperwork, and passing the buck. Instead, it's about this private room filled with the smell of instant noodles and cigarette smoke, grinding away at code for even the smallest millisecond of optimization.

Zhang Jian and Wan Lianghao are rare talents who are well-developed full-stack programmers. They have excellent thinking skills. Often, when he discovers a problem, he can give them a brief explanation and they will immediately understand.

Zhang Qingheng's foundation was indeed weak, but fortunately, he was hardworking and could endure hardship. He was patient and tireless when given repetitive tasks. Bai Yuhang had made up his mind to hand over the new server service architecture to them so they could familiarize themselves with it in advance. Technical skills, once mastered, can ensure a comfortable life anywhere, let alone having access to the latest and most promising technologies five to ten years ahead of time.

"Alright, everyone, give it your all." Bai Yuhang flicked the ash into a can. "If we can get online tonight, I'll treat everyone to a good meal tomorrow morning, all you can eat!"

"Is there enough meat?" Zhang Jian shouted without turning his head.

"Plenty of food! If you overeat and get sick, it'll be considered a work injury!"