sinovels Chapter 146 Lin Dong's Angry Outburst
Chapter 146 Lin Dong's Angry Outburst
Chapter 146 Lin Dong's Angry Outburst
He looked away, walked back to his desk, and sat down.
I turned on my computer and continued writing.
The desktop system was more complex than he had anticipated. The window manager, the event loop, the drawing interface—each component was not difficult, but when put together, the workload was enormous.
He spent two days working on it, and the desktop application was up and running, but the interface was terribly ugly. The main problem was he didn't have time to fine-tune it. He needed to get the functionality working first, and then worry about the interface later.
Shenzhen University started its new semester in mid-February.
Banners on campus were replaced or hung up as needed, and students dragged their suitcases back to their dormitories, making the corridors lively again.
But none of this concerned Lin Dong. He sat in his office and made a phone call to Song Yao.
"Teacher Song, I would like to ask for another month's leave."
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Song Yao didn't ask why, nor did she say, like last time, "You don't take leave like that in college." She simply said, "Okay, I understand. Take care of yourself, don't overwork yourself."
Lin Dong said, "Thank you, Teacher Song."
After hanging up the phone, he put it on the table and continued writing code.
Two days later, Uncle Cai brought in another person.
This resume was much better than Chen Zhiyuan's; he graduated from a prestigious domestic university and had worked for four years in system development at a major telecommunications company. Lin Dong looked at the resume and thought it was worth a try.
The interview was scheduled for 3 p.m. The man arrived on time, dressed in a shirt and trousers, his hair neatly combed, and he sat up straight. Lin Dong asked him a few questions.
"Explain the memory management mechanism of the Linux kernel."
That person spoke.
Well said. You said everything you needed to say, and your presentation was clear, organized, and logically sound.
Lin Dong nodded and then asked, "If you were to build a memory management module for an embedded system from scratch, with limited hardware resources—only 256MB of memory—how would you design it?"
The man paused for a moment. After thinking for a while, he said, "We can refer to Linu's design approach, but make some simplifications. For example, reduce the number of page table levels and simplify the allocation algorithm."
"How exactly should it be streamlined?"
The man paused again. He mentioned some general directions, but no concrete solutions. Lin Dong listened without saying anything. He then asked another question: "In your previous projects, were they built from scratch, or were they optimizations of existing frameworks?"
The person was silent for two seconds: "It's mainly optimization. Performance tuning and bug fixing on an existing framework. I've never done a project from scratch before."
Lin Dong nodded. Another one. The resume looked impressive, a background at a major company, and a string of technical jargon. But the moment the questions got to the bottom of things, the flaws were exposed.
Starting from scratch and making minor repairs isn't about technical skills, it's about mindset.
Those who make minor repairs think about "how to do things right within the existing framework," while those who start from scratch think about "whether the framework itself is correct."
He wanted the latter, but all the interviewees were for the former. It wasn't that these people were incompetent, but his standards were too high. However, for systems, lower standards wouldn't work. He didn't ask any more questions.
Uncle Cai whispered from the side, "Mr. Lin, this won't do either?"
"No way," Lin Dong said. "He can only optimize, not design. Modifying an existing framework is one thing, building a framework from scratch is another."
Uncle Cai nodded and made a note in his notebook.
Two days later, another one came.
I worked on the underlying system design at a chip company and have strong technical skills.
Lin Dong looked at the resume and thought it was indeed impressive.
But after talking for twenty minutes, he discovered a problem: what this person wanted was a "stable job".
Large company, high salary, clear promotion path.
Startups? Not really considering it.
"Mr. Lin, is this a startup company?" the man asked.
"Yes."
"Then—" he hesitated for a moment, "what is the company's profit model? Which round of financing is it in? What are the plans for the next three years?"
Lin Dong looked at him.
The questions themselves are not problematic, but the timing of the questions is wrong.
A systems engineer who doesn't ask about the technology stack or architecture design will first ask about funding and planning.
He didn't come looking for a job; he came to seek refuge.
"Go back and wait for news," Lin Dong said.
After the man left, Uncle Cai sighed, "Mr. Lin, this one won't do either?"
"What he wants is stability," Lin Dong said. "We can't give that."
One evening in late February, Lin Dong was working overtime at the company.
He was the only one left in the lab.
Zhang Mingyuan finished running the data in the afternoon. When he left, I asked him, "Aren't you leaving yet?" He said, "I'll write for a little longer." Now the whole floor is empty, and the lights in the corridor have automatically turned off, leaving only the one in his office on.
He stared at the code on the screen, his fingers resting on the keyboard, not moving.
The desktop system is mostly written and can run.
The window can be opened, closed, and dragged.
However, there are still many problems: refresh is incorrect when windows overlap, event responses sometimes lag, and memory usage is much higher than expected. He knows how to fix these problems, but it will take time.
It's too slow for one person to write.
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.
My phone rang. It was a text message from Uncle Cai: "President Lin, I've contacted a few more people. Two of the resumes look alright. I've sent them to your email."
He opened his email and looked at the two resumes.
The first job was with a mobile phone manufacturer where I had three years of experience in system development; my project experience seemed quite good.
His second job was freelancing, doing system porting for people. He closed his resume and didn't schedule any interviews. It wasn't that the companies weren't good enough, it's that he didn't want to interview anymore. He interviewed with three people, and none of them were suitable. It wasn't that his skills were lacking, it was that his approach was wrong.
He wants someone who can start from scratch.
But such people aren't the kind who lie in a resume pool waiting to be picked up.
Such people are either treated like treasures in big companies or haven't even graduated from school yet.
On the first day of March, Uncle Cai brought another person.
This resume isn't as impressive. I have an associate's degree and have worked at several small companies, mostly doing system porting.
Lin Dong didn't want to meet him, but Uncle Cai said, "He came all the way from Dongguan, let's meet him."
The man sat in the conference room, looking a little nervous. He didn't know what to do with his hands, and he didn't dare to look Lin Dong in the eye.
Looking at him like this, Lin Dong felt a surge of anger. His resume was no good, and he was like this when they met. He didn't even dare to look people in the eye. What kind of system could he possibly write?
He took a deep breath and suppressed his anger.
"What systems have you worked on?" he asked, his voice a few decibels harder than usual.
"Embedded Linux," the man said, his voice a little weak. "I used to work for a company in Dongguan that made in-vehicle equipment. I did everything from kernel trimming to driver adaptation."
Have you ever built a framework from scratch?
The man paused for a moment, then asked, "From zero?"
"Um.
""
The man thought for a moment, then shook his head: "No. Everything is done within an existing framework. What you mean by starting from scratch—I've never done that."
After hearing this, the anger in Lin Dong's chest surged up again. He didn't want to ask any more questions, nor did he want to look at this person anymore. He stood up, walked to the window, and turned his back to the person.
Outside the window were the streets of Shenzhen, with cars coming and going. He didn't want to say a word more.
"You can leave now," Lin Dong said in a deep voice.
The man stood up, bowed, and left.
Uncle Cai went out to see him off, and after a while he came back and saw Lin Dong still standing by the window.
"Mr. Lin," Uncle Cai said cautiously, "how about we lower the standards? Leaving this part of the system empty isn't a solution."
Lin Dong didn't turn around: "Lower what standards?"
"It's like this: first, find someone to get the job done, even if it's just patching things up. We'll replace them when we find a suitable replacement later."
Lin Dong turned around and looked at Uncle Cai.
Uncle Cai felt a little uncomfortable under his gaze, but still forced himself to say, "President Lin, I didn't mean to just find someone to make up the numbers."
But there's been no one working on the system, and it's not a long-term solution for you to handle it all by yourself.
Lin Dong stared at him, his voice suddenly rising: "If you hire someone who only knows how to patch things up, what kind of system will it be? Will you scrap it and start over halfway through? Do you know how long a system rebuild takes? Three months? Half a year? Can we afford to wait?"
Uncle Cai was stunned.
He had followed Lin Dong for so long and had never seen him so angry.
"Mr. Lin, that's not what I meant."
"Then what do you mean?" Lin Dong interrupted him, his voice rising, "Just find anyone to fill the quota? And then what? Who's responsible if there are problems? You? Me?"
Uncle Cai opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word.
The meeting room was eerily quiet.
Lin Dong looked at him, his chest heaving. After a few seconds, he took a deep breath, turned around, and faced away from Uncle Cai.
"I was a little anxious just now." Lin Dong's voice lowered, becoming slightly hoarse. "I spoke too harshly."
Uncle Cai stood behind him, without moving.
"You were doing this for the company's good," Lin Dong said. "I shouldn't have snapped at you."
Uncle Cai was silent for a few seconds, then spoke, his voice a little hoarse: "President Lin, you're right. We can't settle for anything less than perfect when it comes to the system. I'll keep looking until I find something suitable."
Lin Dong nodded.
Uncle Cai turned and left. He stopped at the door and glanced back. Lin Dong was still standing by the window, his figure appearing somewhat frail in the afternoon light. He wanted to say something, but swallowed it back, and pushed the door open to leave.
One afternoon in mid-March, Lin Dong held an all-staff meeting in the conference room.
Each module has started reporting its progress.
Zhang Mingyuan said that the motherboard power consumption was reduced to 380mA and the temperature was 38.5 degrees Celsius. It ran continuously for 20 days without crashing.
It's a little better than the target set before the new year. Zhou Chengyu said that the touch latency has been reduced to 11.5 milliseconds, which is still a little short of 11 milliseconds, but the direction is right.
Cheng Chuan said the antenna signal was 0.5 dB higher than normal, exceeding the target.
Cheng Yu said the heat dissipation was kept below 0.6 degrees Celsius.
Ding Xiao said the driver and algorithm worked perfectly. Su Xiaowen said that most of the 200 sets of casings had been produced, with a yield rate of 97%. Li Guohui said the factory was operating normally.
Every line is good news.
Lin Dong listened and nodded.
He should be happy. But he couldn't be happy.
His mind was completely occupied with things related to the system.
There are still a few bugs in the page table for memory management that haven't been fixed, the desktop event loop will lag under high load, and the application layer interface was defined in half and then scrapped and rewritten.
The good news drifted past him like the wind across water, leaving no trace.
He knew he should smile and say something encouraging, but he said nothing.
After each module reported its progress, Lin Dong remained silent, and the meeting room fell quiet.
Zhang Mingyuan looked down at his notebook. He glanced at Lin Dong.
Lin Dong sat in the main seat with a notebook open in front of him, but he hadn't written a single word.
He had heavy dark circles under his eyes, bloodshot eyes, and his hair had grown quite a bit longer than before the Lunar New Year, as he hadn't had time to get a haircut.
For the past month, every time Zhang Mingyuan worked overtime until late at night, the lights were always on when he passed by Lin Dong's office.
Sometimes Lin Dong was there when he left, and Lin Dong was still there when he came back the next morning. He didn't know if Lin Dong had gone home, slept, or eaten properly. All he knew was that Lin Dong had been handling the system alone for almost two months.
He closed his laptop and lowered his voice as he spoke, "Mr. Lin, how's the system going?"
The meeting room fell silent for a moment.
All eyes were on Lin Dong.
"I'm writing," Lin Dong said.
Zhang Mingyuan looked at him, wanting to ask again, but then felt he shouldn't.
He opened his mouth, but finally said, "Mr. Lin, regarding the system—if you need any help, please let us know. Although we don't understand the system, we can still lend a hand and run some tests."
Several people in the conference room nodded.
Lin Dong glanced around at them.
These people, each with their own work to do, each working overtime, each giving their all. But they were all willing to put down their own work to help him.
Lin Dong withdrew his gaze and softened his voice: "You guys just need to focus on your own sections. The system will be ready soon."
No one spoke.
Zhang Mingyuan nodded and didn't ask any more questions. He wanted to say, "President Lin, you should take a break," but he knew it would be pointless. The system was there; President Lin wouldn't stop.
Zhou Chengyu pushed up his glasses and lowered his head. Su Xiaowen looked at Lin Dong, her lips moved, but she didn't say anything. Cheng Chuan wanted to say something, but Cheng Yu stopped him.
The meeting is over.
The group gradually left. Zhang Mingyuan stopped at the door, glanced back at Lin Dong, seemed about to say something, but then swallowed his words and pushed the door open to leave.
Lin Dong sat alone in the conference room.
The whiteboard displays the post-New Year goals for each module, most of which are checked off.
Only the bottom line—System—is still empty.
He stared at the blank square for a long time.
Two months have passed, from January to March. Everyone is waiting.
He wrote tens of thousands of lines of code by himself, and the system was able to boot up and run the desktop.
Can it be used? Yes, it can be used.
Once installed on a mobile phone, it can run when turned on, making calls, and sending text messages.
But was that what he wanted? No. He was benchmarking against Apple. Apple's system is smooth, stable, and refined; every animation has been meticulously crafted.
What he wrote is usable, but not presentable.
He stood up and erased the words on the whiteboard.
That evening, Lin Dong was writing code alone at the company.
The desktop system is running, but refreshing is incorrect when windows overlap.
He spent two hours investigating and found it was an issue with the event loop. He modified a function, and it worked. Then he discovered that memory usage was significantly higher than expected, so he spent another hour investigating and found that the drawing interface wasn't releasing resources. He fixed that, and it worked.
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Outside the window was the brightly lit night view of Shenzhen.
My phone rang. It was a text message from my mom: "Adong, are you asleep? Don't stay up too late."
He replied with two words: "Soon."
After sending it, he looked at the two words on the screen and suddenly found it a little funny.
almost.
He told Zhang Mingyuan that it would be soon, he told Uncle Cai that it would be soon, and he also told his mother that it would be soon.
But just how fast is "fast"?
he does not know.