Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

The core technology of IT has intersected with me.

Recently, the issue of ZTE Corporation being sanctioned by the US government caused an uproar. People who have been deluded by the false prosperity of real estate for many years suddenly found that although we have become the second largest economy in the world, but failed to master the core technology of many important high-tech industries. For a time, many articles analyzed why Chinese people can not master the core technology, from the system, from the national character of the multi-dimensional omni-directional or deep or shallow analysis. The author naturally did not let go of this hot spot, wrote two articles, analyzed the reasons, and offered suggestions for China's chip industry to break through the suppression of Europe and the United States and master the core technology in the future.

The author has worked hard in the IT industry for nearly 17 years, and China has not really mastered any of the core technologies of the IT industry (complete and complete independent intellectual property rights). In the author's opinion, the core technology of IT industry refers to computer CPU in hardware, PC and mobile operating system in software, office management software (such as Microsoft's Office), database software (Oracle,DB,SAP HANA), open source software (such as Spring, Hibernate), middleware servers (such as Weblogic,Tomcat,Apache), and high-end core software systems in ERP industry (such as SAP). Oracle EBS, etc.) and other system-level software systems.

Looking back on my 17 years of work, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had intersected with the core technologies of the IT industry! I recall that when I first graduated in 2001, I joined the branch of an American software company in Changsha as a Java programmer. At that time, Java was very popular, and many computer-related students in colleges and universities flocked to it. Many people began to study Java by themselves in the third and fourth year of the National people's Congress, and a few people found part-time jobs in off-campus enterprises and wrote various applications in Java. And at that time, the gimmick promotion of the Java virtual machine "write once, run everywhere" made many people admire Java. At that time, the global mainstream core programming platform, in addition to Sun's J2EE platform (using Java programming language), there is also a well-known Microsoft .NET platform (programming language is C#). The competition between the two platforms is fierce, each with countless programmers cheering for it. Because of the "write once, run everywhere" feature of the J2EE platform, the .NET platform, which can only run on Microsoft operating systems, is somewhat weak. However, based on the powerful software ecology of Microsoft operating system, the popularity and scope of use of the .NET platform is not inferior to that of the J2EE platform.

The American software company I joined, headquartered in Silicon Valley, was founded by a Taiwanese American who had just come to Changsha, Hunan Province to set up a branch. Then I recruited the first batch of employees through strict written interviews from my school and several other universities in Changsha. The newly recruited employees, all fresh graduates, are divided into several groups, development group, test group and so on. Then transferred several old employees from Dongguan branch to Changsha branch, served as the leader of several groups, and led us newcomers who had just graduated.

I began to learn the Java programming language after I joined the company. Some of my colleagues learned the language when they were in college, and there were even some small opportunities for practical projects. In the face of them, I was under a lot of pressure, studied hard, passed the probation period trembling, and officially started a new career in this company.

The scale of this company is not large, and its employees are all graduates who have graduated for three years or even fresh graduates, and their technical strength is not too strong. But what the company has to do is really unusual. It is not similar to the low-tech application software made by more than 90% of the domestic software companies, but a kind of software product that can be said to be system software. This software, is a kind of software platform migration software, to develop various applications based on the .NET platform, after the conversion of our software platform, into applications written in Java language, so that it can run on various operating system platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.). This means that you need to write a converter between two programming languages, and you need to use the Java programming language to implement all the functions of the .NET platform (all Class), that is, to rewrite the .NET platform in the Java language! This is a system-level software product, but it is really not an ordinary enterprise application software! It can be said that at that time, no company in China dared to do such a thing! It is precisely because this company is engaged in this seemingly high-end business, it has also attracted venture capital from the United States. This enabled the company to operate normally even though it had no customers and no income for several years.

While working in the company, I have been involved in the migration of many class under a certain Package under the .NET platform. What we need to do is, first, by testing or reading the original documentation of the .NET platform, to understand the role of these Class, the purpose of each attribute in class, the function of each method, and then write a corresponding class in Java language, which also defines the relevant properties and method, but with exactly the same function as class in the .NET platform. In addition to using class library in the J2EE platform, we also use open source software that supports Java. This is the first time I have heard of and used open source software. I feel that this thing is really good, and I admire the authors of these open source software. I think they are great, on the one hand, they are skilled, on the other hand, they have the spirit of sharing. The program we developed was handed over to the test team to test, found bug, and was returned to continue to modify until the test passed.

While working in this company, the author suffered for a period of time and deeply felt that this kind of system software was really very difficult to do. The method of some Class of class library in .NET platform is very powerful and can take into account a variety of scenarios. Through the class library description of the .NET platform or some of our own tests, it is difficult to fully understand its function, either the blind touch the elephant, or misunderstand it. Often think that they have implemented the relevant functions and developed them, but once they are submitted to the test group, they will find that there are still a lot of bug. Many functions, that is, working overtime every day, racking their brains, scratching their scalps, looking for information everywhere and asking experienced technology masters in the industry, they can't figure it out. If you think about it, how complex Microsoft .NET should be, and the platform that Microsoft has organized thousands of engineers to work hard to build over the years, can we Junior programmers easily figure it out? Often puzzled by the pain and dilemma of not being able to achieve technological breakthroughs, it makes people very depressed and really uncomfortable, which makes me want to run away.

After a year of hard work in this company, I decided to look for external opportunities and soon got the offer of Chuangji Software Park, one of the four major software parks in China at that time. After entering the Creative Software Park, I found that the software made by this company is very simple, and it is all enterprise application software, mainly to provide software and hardware integration solutions for the information construction of some large software companies. This kind of application-level software, the technical content is generally not high, as long as it is clear about the needs of customers, it is not difficult to achieve it technically. This gives me some confidence, finally can be handy to carry out the work, and finally can have a sense of achievement: the software I participated in writing will soon be used by many customers to help customers improve their work efficiency and management level!

After several years of Java programmers, from the Creative Software Park in Changsha to the Tianhe Software Park in Guangzhou, the software done during the work is application-level software, which is generally not high in technology, which is also the real reality of China's software development industry. I have never met a company as determined to do high-end complex core system software as the first company. Later, I changed to work as a SAP consultant, and the technical content of the work was even lower. After learning the technology and function of a module of the SAP software system, I relied on my mouth to deal with customers.

To sum up, the author has worked in the IT industry for 17 years, only the first year in the first company, the work is the most challenging, engaged in system software research and development, closest to the core technology of the software industry. From 2002 to now, the technical content of the work is getting lower and lower, and it is also farther and farther away from the core technology of IT. It is really a great sorrow and misfortune in life!

2018-04-26 was written in Xinwu District, Wuxi City.

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