Chapter 29 Girl Programmer
Wang Chaoxin didn't have much trouble convincing Tian Yaoming. First, because Tian's work had only just begun, sending a few people away wouldn't have much impact; second, Tian's team was generally more pessimistic than Qin Weimin's.
Even though Su Yuanshan had personally said they wouldn't be pressured for immediate results and should focus on accumulating knowledge and technology, working in a high-tech company without producing tangible results still felt like dead weight to many.
Baseband communication really was a major weakness in China; most domestic wireless communication efforts were still stuck on point-to-point communication, while GSM was a cellular network. Even analog "Big Brother" mobile phones weren't fully understood domestically yet, let alone digital signals. Thus, those sent out to work on pager technology didn't object; pager technology was mature enough that progress could be seen with effort.
Fortunately, Tian Yaoming remained confident, constantly motivating the team, organizing endless discussion sessions, and devouring thick GSM reference materials.
Meanwhile, after the first phase of training on the tenth floor ended, payments for the software licenses from various companies and universities started coming in—except from UESTC. Relying on Su Xinghe's relationship, UESTC had requested thirty licenses upfront without paying a single cent, saying they would pay later.
Pan Xiaojun fully unleashed his skill of "adjusting prices according to the customer." For big joint-venture companies like Beiling (with Bell) and Advanced Semiconductor (with Philips), he priced five sets of licenses at forty thousand US dollars per year and even sent an on-site engineer for support.
After sweeping through all the semiconductor companies in Shanghai, Pan Xiaojun headed south to Shenzhen. Although Shenzhen was full of new electronics factories, few could afford Yuanxin EDA. Still, even mosquito legs were meat. Pan put on his best persuasion skills, encouraging companies with immediate design needs to purchase PCB licenses. To help, he gave heavy discounts to one router company, justifying it as "supporting domestic industry."
Pan Xiaojun swept across the region like a storm, while Yuanxin's training sessions became a constant stream.
**
By late August, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Machinery and Electronics Industry, and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications jointly issued a notice officially approving Yuanxin EDA and its textbook as the designated teaching material for electronics-related majors nationwide.
Thus, Yuanxin EDA unexpectedly swept across domestic universities.
The designated purchase price was low: ten licenses for 500,000 yuan per year.
But Su Yuanshan was no fool. He launched a "University Program" modeled after Western practices—cheap for schools, but strictly prohibited for commercial use. Any violation would immediately revoke the license. Each license was tied to a set of project files, making it easy to track.
While Yuanxin EDA was making waves domestically, it caused barely a ripple internationally.
Apart from a few foreign headquarters from joint ventures quickly sending people to buy copies, it seemed that the global semiconductor industry either didn't know or didn't care that a revolutionary EDA tool had emerged in a third-tier Chinese city.
Many at Yuanxin couldn't understand it, and even Qin Weimin asked if foreigners were fools.
Only Su Yuanshan and Xi Xiaoding remained unfazed.
One afternoon, Su Yuanshan and Qin Weimin sat in Xi's office, chatting while mooching some of his snacks.
"In the eyes of foreigners, we're still the land of 'ten-thousand-jin-per-acre harvests.' No news from us is believable," Su Yuanshan said, explaining Qin's confusion with a smile. "If they don't see it with their own eyes, they won't believe it."
"And all semiconductor companies are competitors," Xi Xiaoding added. "If you found a powerful new tool that could crush competitors, would you announce it loudly? No—you'd quietly use it to widen the gap."
"Even those who know will stay silent and just work harder to upgrade," Su Yuanshan concluded.
Qin Weimin smiled and shook his head, finally accepting their explanation.
"I'll go nap. We have a discussion session this afternoon," he said.
Su Yuanshan jumped off the desk. "I better get back too—if I'm late, someone will steal my sofa again."
Because Su Yuanshan was easygoing, his office sofa was often claimed for naps—especially by Sun Xihui, Tang Wenfang, and Yang Yiwen. They felt awkward crashing in other offices, but in Su Yuanshan's, they were perfectly at ease.
Sure enough, when Su Yuanshan returned, he found Sun Xihui and Yang Yiwen sprawled side-by-side on his sofa, playing Tetris on a handheld game console. When he entered, they just tugged the towel-blanket higher without even lifting their heads.
"You two... should I just put a bed in here?" Su Yuanshan joked.
"I agree. Or replace the chairs in the finance office with sofas," Yang Yiwen said, handing the game console to Sun Xihui and resting her head on her arm. "You all have private offices. Why do I have to squeeze into finance?"
"I've got an office, but it's packed with little interns," Sun Xihui said without blinking. Though she was the logistics manager, her office housed several young girls and mountains of supplies. Feeling bad watching them nap awkwardly at their desks, she had surrendered her sofa and come to squat in Su Yuanshan's office herself.
"Fine, once this batch finishes training, we'll renovate the upstairs. You can sleep however you want," Su Yuanshan said, sitting at his desk and checking the time. He planned to nap for half an hour.
Just then, an employee hesitated at the door. Su Yuanshan raised an eyebrow and waved him in. "Brother Zhu, what's up? Am I electrified or something?"
Zhu Jianting, a graduate student from UESTC's electronics and communications department, had joined Yuanxin right after graduation.
He sighed and walked stiffly to Su Yuanshan's desk.
The two girls laughed, pulling the towel-blanket completely over themselves. Sun Xihui put down the game console and turned to look—Zhu Jianting was one of the experts she had recruited to help at her cousin's computer training center.
"What's wrong?"
"Need help," Zhu said, handing over a floppy disk and glancing awkwardly at Sun Xihui. "After work yesterday, I taught two classes at Manager Sun's cousin's training center."
"And?"
Su Yuanshan knew Zhu's background—a poor family, supporting his twin sisters through high school by giving up government job placement and joining Yuanxin for a better salary.
"And I ran into a problem. A student wrote a C++ payroll management program—about 500 lines."
"Impressive," Su Yuanshan said, genuinely surprised. He knew the training center attracted students aiming for the programming contest.
A 500-line payroll program was already on par with a typical undergraduate final project.
"But there's a bug," Zhu said awkwardly. "It crashes randomly after a few runs. I tried debugging during lunch but couldn't fix it. I'm worried it'll affect my afternoon work, so I had to ask for your help."
Su Yuanshan smiled, appreciating Zhu's clear-headedness.
He loaded the floppy disk, opened the project, ran a few tests, and sure enough—the program crashed unpredictably.
Switching to the source code, Su Yuanshan first checked the comments.
Not bad—the commenting habits were decent, and the logic was readable.
Following the comments through the code, he didn't find any issues at first glance. Only after forcing another crash during debugging did he spot a problem: a pointer issue.
He annotated the problematic section but didn't modify the student's original code, instead adding a comment with suggestions for fixing it.
It seemed obvious—the program was likely a competition piece. In that case, he could "guide" but should not personally intervene.
Zhu Jianting, who had been marveling at how quickly Su Yuanshan found the issue, heard him ask, "How old is the student?"
"About your age," Zhu said after glancing at Su Yuanshan's youthful face. "And it's a girl."
At that moment, Yang Yiwen's voice piped up: "A girl? Is she pretty?"
"Uh... yes," Zhu said, relieved to retrieve the floppy disk. "She did the whole project independently. I'll give her the annotated version and let her fix it herself."
"If she did it solo, she's a shoo-in for a first prize," Su Yuanshan commented.
Zhu grinned. "I'll pass that along."
"Better not..." Su Yuanshan started to say.
"No, you better tell her," Yang Yiwen teased. "Tell her a genius fixed her program. If she's interested, invite her to visit Yuanxin."
She turned to Sun Xihui. "Our Little President Su is a prime catch—too bad he's holed up with techies all day. I'm worried he'll never learn how to date."
"I agree," Sun Xihui chimed in.
"Enough out of you two. Time to nap," Su Yuanshan said, reclining and closing his eyes.
Date?
He already had a wife. No need to date anyone else.
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