Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

Bai Yuhang went downstairs to the convenience store. When he returned to the dormitory, only the top three students from his department were there. He was carrying a plastic bag containing ten packets of Master Kong braised beef noodles and four boxes of Handshake brand cigarettes, a local specialty from the Harbin Cigarette Factory.

"Wow," the third brother took off his headphones, glanced at it, and said, "Is he trying to cultivate immortality?"

"Seclusion. Do the other four have classes?" Bai Yuhang threw his things on the table. "For the next two days, except when I go to the toilet, I'll be sitting in this chair the whole time. I'll be using the dorm computers for the next two days, and I'll treat everyone to stir-fry afterwards. Don't listen to anyone who calls me for dinner. Fifth brother, get me two kettles of hot water."

"Yes, sir." Liu Jing, the fifth brother, was bored and went off eagerly.

Bai Yuhang turned on his computer, the screen's pale blue light reflecting on his face. He created a new project folder in the root directory of his D drive, named "QH_NetBar_Sys", which reads "Qihang Internet Cafe Management System".

In 2000, internet cafe management software was still in its infancy. Most internet cafe owners kept accounts by hand, relying on the manager and customers to shout things like "This machine is on" or "This machine is for an extra hour."

When there are many customers, the internet cafe becomes like a vegetable market.

The few management software programs available on the market are mostly standalone versions. You have to manually open the software after turning on your computer to start the timer. If you restart your computer, you can play for free without anyone noticing.

The most disgusting thing is that the management software for internet access that you pay for is also full of loopholes. Network administrators or customers with a little technical knowledge can easily access the internet for free by changing the local time or the registry.

Bai Yuhang didn't intend to write anything too complicated, but the software architecture had to be stable. He directly adopted the mature C/S architecture from later generations, that is, the client/server architecture. The server was placed at the cashier control, and the client was installed on each machine. The heartbeat data between the two ends was verified every five seconds. If the connection was lost or the data did not match, the screen would be locked.

The sound of typing echoed in the dormitory, the rhythm quite fast, like a downpour hitting corrugated iron sheets.

Around 4 PM, Bai Yuhang was making instant noodles when his pager went off.

Bai Yuhang glanced at it and saw it was Su Muqing. He put down what he was doing, grabbed his coat, and quickly ran to the phone booth at the end of the first-floor corridor.

"I have to go back." Su Muqing's voice on the other end of the line was not as gentle as usual; it sounded somewhat distorted, and the background noise was loud, like being at a train station. "The research trip is over early."

What time is the train?

"5:30, T18."

Bai Yuhang glanced at his watch; there wasn't time to see him off. "Well then, have a safe trip."

"Okay." There was a two-second silence on the other end. "Be careful with your money. If you need more... email me, call me, or leave me a message on OICQ to keep in touch."

"Don't worry, you won't go hungry."

"I wish you all the best, and don't make me lose money." Su Muqing suddenly smiled. "My dear CEO Bai."

"It's a wish for our success, hoping that President Su can receive a bonus next year."

The phone hangs up.

Bai Yuhang stood in the cold wind for a while, holding the receiver, listening to the repeated busy tone. Only when the busy tone ended did he smile and hang up the phone.

That sense of farewell that belonged to the year 2000 was intense, a feeling of helplessness. Back then, there was no WeChat, no video calls. Parting between people was like a kite suddenly losing its string. All you could do was wait for the next email, or a message on a chat app.

Bai Yuhang quickly returned to his dormitory and seamlessly switched back to "ruthless programmer" mode.

After playing two rounds of CS, the third brother, Zhang Jian, couldn't resist his curiosity any longer. He picked up a large tea mug and went to watch the excitement from behind Bai Yuhang.

Zhang Jian was a tech whiz and academic star among the students in the Software Engineering Department. His hands-on skills were widely recognized. At first, he had a playful look on his face that said, "I see you're just messing around with something."

He only watched for ten minutes, and then simply left the teacup at his lips, forgetting to drink it.

The code Bai Yuhang typed on the screen was frighteningly clear in its structure. The variable naming was standardized, the comments were detailed, and it was prepared for modular encapsulation. It was a completely different species from the messy "noodle code" he usually saw.

"Hey, Sixth Brother," the Third Brother couldn't help but point at the screen, "Why is your memory allocation code so convoluted? Just use the malloc function for dynamic memory allocation, wouldn't that be enough?"

"Using it directly won't work; it's prone to fragmentation. Some internet cafes have low-spec machines that are too old, and they'll lag after running for a while." Bai Yuhang didn't even turn his head, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "Look at this, I wrote a simple memory pool."

The third guy's eyelids, which were usually closed, suddenly opened for a moment. He was a freshman learning C, and many people hadn't even mastered pointers yet, but this guy was already writing memory pools by hand?

"And this too." The third brother pointed to a strange piece of process protection code on the screen. "What's this for? Is it for virus protection?"

Bai Yuhang stopped what he was doing, turned around and grinned at Lao San, a smile that revealed a shrewdness: "This? This is called a 'daemon process.' It's to prevent anyone from accidentally closing the billing software, and by the way... it also makes sure that the computer's browser homepage is always our navigation site."

"As soon as the homepage is detected to have been modified," Bai Yuhang gestured, making a grabbing motion in the air, "it will silently revert it in the background, checking once every minute. It can't be deleted or turned off. Unless you reinstall the system, there's nothing anyone can do about it."

The third brother was dumbfounded: "Holy crap, isn't that just a Trojan horse malware?"

"No, no, that's not it. It's called 'user experience protection,' don't talk nonsense," Bai Yuhang corrected. "It's to prevent malicious tampering, for the safety of the internet cafe."

The third brother gave a thumbs up: "You're awesome. I think from now on, whoever offends you will be in trouble."

Although he complained, the way the third brother looked at Bai Yuhang changed.

They're all computer science students; an expert's skill is immediately apparent. Bai Yuhang's level is so high that even the graduating seniors might not be able to match him, let alone freshmen.

By late the next night, the dormitory lights had long been turned off, and the other six guys in the room were all fast asleep. Only two computers were still on, with Bai Yuhang and Lao San still busy.

Bai Yuhang ran into trouble.

The packaged program runs perfectly fine on the virtual machine, but when we set up a local area network with Lao San's computer to do real-world testing, it often crashes with a blue screen for no reason.

"What's going on?" Bai Yuhang frowned, staring at the screen full of hexadecimal code.

"It looks like an abnormal interrupt conflict." The third brother, who was also awake, helped out from the side. "The old motherboards don't have enough IRQ resources. You're sending heartbeat data too frequently. It's like it's fighting with the network card driver."

"That makes sense." Bai Yuhang rubbed his throbbing temples. "We need to reduce the frequency, or switch to an asynchronous I/O model."

"You modify the code, and I'll continue testing for you." The third brother pulled over a chair. "I have three different versions of Windows 98 and 95 installed on this computer, perfect for compatibility testing."

Thanks.

"Stop talking nonsense. Just give me a share of the money and treat me to a meal after it's done."

For the next four hours, the only sounds in the dormitory were the soft tapping of keyboards and the occasional whispers between the two.

"How's this version?"

"It still crashed. Look, error 0x0000000A."

"Then let's try this; I've added exception handling."

"Okay, it seems to be stable... Wait, no, no, damn it, there's a memory leak, the memory is increasing rapidly."

"Damn it, it's my fault, I forgot to release the handle."

That kind of tacit understanding is amazing.

In his previous life, Bai Yuhang led project teams of over a hundred people, but that kind of hierarchical collaboration and agile development was far less enjoyable than working side by side like this now.

Although the third brother's skills are somewhat immature, his intuition is extremely accurate, and his hands-on ability is indeed strong. He understands things as soon as they are explained and can always catch the tail end of a bug in the first place.

Four o'clock in the morning.

The third brother stared at the "Qihang Internet Cafe Management System v1.0" that had been running stably on the screen for half an hour, and let out a huge yawn: "It's stable now?"

"Yes, it's safe."

Bai Yuhang leaned back in his chair, feeling like his spine was about to break.

He pulled out the last pack of Handshake brand cigarettes, tossed one to the third brother from the few remaining ones, took one out for himself, lit it, and took a deep drag.

The acrid smoke swirled in my lungs before I exhaled, carrying away all my fatigue.

On the screen, the server of the tested management software is running. The interface is very simple. On the left is a list of all the machines in the internet cafe. Each computer icon represents a computer in the internet cafe, and each has a highlight below it. Green indicates that the computer is idle, and red indicates that it is in use. On the right are billing details and control buttons where you can select the computer number.

Although rudimentary, this was a unique prototype of "cloud-based human-computer verification" in 2000, and it was also a veritable "Trojan horse" that allowed him to take over internet cafe desktops.

"Sixth brother," the third brother said, slumped over the table, his eyelids drooping, "if this thing really gets popular, won't we be rich?"

"This is nothing," Bai Yuhang said wistfully, looking at the blue sailboat icon of the Qihang Internet Cafe Management System on the screen. "At most, it's just a ticket."

The third brother didn't hear him; he had already fallen asleep on the table, snoring softly, with the cigarette that had just been thrown to him hanging from his ear.

Bai Yuhang got up, opened the window, and let some fresh air in.

Harbin at four in the morning was bitterly cold. The streetlights cast a dim yellow glow, the streets were deserted, and the occasional bark of a dog could be heard in the distance.

The software was completed on schedule, creating a bridge for further cooperation and mutual benefit with internet cafe owners.

But even in Zhao Jianjun's three internet cafes, the environment was quite complicated, the machine configurations were all kinds of strange, and the people who went online came from all walks of life.

Whether this system, which worked perfectly in the dormitory, can withstand the harassment of those "saboteurs" in the chaotic real combat environment remains to be seen.

Bai Yuhang stubbed out his cigarette, closed the window, and the warmth of the room instantly enveloped him. He turned around, draped his coat over Lao San's shoulders, and climbed into his own bed.

go to bed.

Once awake, I got up and went to Daowai.