Chapter 31 Senior Brother is Awesome
Su Yuanshan spent the entire afternoon discussing microcode with Qin Weimin, not caring whether Qin understood it all—because based on his knowledge of Qin, if he didn't fully grasp something, he would definitely come back and ask three days later—that was a rule Qin had set for himself.
When Su Yuanshan went to fetch his bicycle after work, Zhu Jianting, who happened to be heading the same way, noticed Su Yuanshan's rare cheerful expression and joked, "You look like you're about to meet that girl with me."
"What?" Su Yuanshan blinked, finally recalling what Zhu was talking about. He laughed heartily and mounted his bike, pedaling hard. "How can a girl compare to a CPU?"
"Could it be that Senior Brother Qin has made some breakthrough?" Zhu Jianting rode alongside him. He was part of Tian Yaoming's team, currently tackling baseband challenges.
"Not a breakthrough, just some progress," Su Yuanshan replied with a smile. He and Qin Weimin had agreed to keep it quiet for now, to avoid demoralizing Tian Yaoming's group.
...
The two chatted casually. As they passed Taiping Street, Su Yuanshan looked up at the giant sign for the computer training center.
Zhu Jianting braked under the sign and tilted his head toward Su Yuanshan. "Want to go up and take a look? There are quite a few girls studying programming. Some are pretty cute."
"Senior Brother Zhu, you're a grown man. Don't try to set me up," Su Yuanshan laughed, pedaling quickly and blending into the bicycle traffic.
He knew all too well that an engineering student's definition of "pretty" could be... questionable. What Zhu considered a ten was probably only a five.
...
Zhu Jianting locked his bike in a nearby alley and went up to the second floor, where the training center was located.
Thanks to Yuanxin's schedule, he could make it to the 6:15 evening class. During the break, he'd grab a boxed meal, then attend another class before heading back to his rental room around 9 PM—with some time left to study.
The training center was housed in a two-bedroom apartment.
The main hall was a big classroom teaching basic languages like BASIC and typing, mostly attended by middle schoolers.
The master bedroom had been turned into a special small class, focused exclusively on C/C++ for the programming competition.
Zhu Jianting checked in with the boss, then opened the small classroom door.
A girl sitting at a computer, twirling her ponytail with a pen cap, immediately looked up.
She wore a black skirt and a white short-sleeved blouse, her appearance neat and refreshing, with strikingly refined features, especially her eyebrows and bright eyes.
Seeing Zhu Jianting, the girl unconsciously gripped her pen cap tighter.
Zhu smiled. "Xiao Dai, come out for a moment."
The girl immediately stood up and followed him to the door.
Zhu closed the door behind them, glanced around the hall, then pulled out the floppy disk and lowered his voice. "This is for your competition entry, right?"
The girl nodded shyly, her eyes full of expectation.
Zhu smiled. "I didn't modify it."
The girl froze, her delicate eyebrows furrowing, but she quickly recovered and said softly, "Thank you anyway, Teacher Zhu."
"But someone pointed out the bug for you," Zhu added. "And not just anyone—a real programming master."
"Huh?"
"You'll see when you open the code," Zhu said, winking and pushing the door open.
...
Back at her seat, the girl, remembering Zhu's words about a 'programming master,' felt a wave of nervousness—but quickly smiled to herself.
Surely it wouldn't require prayer to read a few lines of code?
She inserted the floppy disk, launched C++, and opened her project, starting to check line by line.
About halfway through, she spotted a block of comments she hadn't written:
/* Hello, the bug stems from the pointer at line 279. This causes a logic error leading to memory redundancy and eventual crashes.
Your code has good readability and logical structure, but the variable settings could be more standardized, and the code can be further streamlined.
Since this may be a competition entry, I only offer hints. Don't forget to delete this comment before submitting. */
The girl bit her lip, her eyes sparkling, and suddenly chuckled softly.
A girl at the neighboring computer peeked over. "Dai'er, what's so funny?"
"I'm admiring a master's code comments."
"Wow? Let me see!"
The other girl leaned over to read the comments and gasped, "That really sounds like a pro—did it help?"
"Let's find out," Dai'er said, quickly navigating to the suggested pointer.
Within five minutes, she found the issue, corrected it, and ran the program—no more crashes.
"Yes!"
She clenched her fists, her face flushed with excitement.
"You fixed it?" Zhu Jianting asked from behind, smiling.
"Yes! Thank you, Teacher Zhu, and thank you to that master! Is he your mentor?" she asked eagerly.
"Haha!" Zhu laughed and shook his head. "He's about your age. But in programming, he's a real genius."
"Ah?" the girl blinked, stunned.
Zhu smiled. "Now, delete that comment. You have a real shot at winning."
The girl nodded vigorously, read the comment one last time, then pressed delete.
As Zhu Jianting walked away, she took several deep breaths.
After some hesitation, she pulled out her notebook and wrote a short thank-you note.
When it came time to sign it, she hesitated again—then decided to use a pseudonym: Dai Peiye.
Even though the project had been independently completed, there was always the risk of malicious people accusing her of cheating.
At her father's advice, she had enrolled in the training center under a pseudonym.
Now it was almost the end of August, and she would soon leave the provincial city to return to Penang for her second year of high school.
She hoped she could win.
Folding the note into a tiny paper boat, she smiled.
**
At home that evening, Su Yuanshan excitedly told his father about Qin Weimin's discovery of a critical patentable innovation.
Su Xinghe was delighted and immediately sent a pager message to encourage Qin to keep it up.
Over dinner, father and son naturally discussed their progress.
Thanks to the new microcontroller architecture Qin proposed, Su Xinghe's team was making rapid progress and was already debugging microcode.
At this rate, it wouldn't take more than two or three months to complete tape-out for the first microcontroller.
Su Xinghe laughed, mentioning the playful bet he made with Qin Weimin, but Su Yuanshan shot it down immediately—
After all, his master had an entire team of professors and graduate students, while the disciple only had a ragtag group of undergrads and fresh graduates—working on something even harder than a microcontroller, a full CPU architecture.
If the master lost, it would be truly embarrassing!
Su Xinghe rapped his son's head, chuckling, but then sighed.
"After we finish the microcontroller, we'll need to develop real-world applications for it. Otherwise, it's useless. And don't even get me started on the teaching materials—we'll need textbooks too. It's not like EDA; microcontroller textbooks are much trickier to write."
"Dad, have you ever heard this saying?" Su Yuanshan said, grinning.
"First-rate companies set standards. Second-rate companies build brands. Third-rate companies sell products. We're aiming for the frontier—setting standards."
"Imagine if every electronics student used your microcontroller, learned from your textbook—that would be true dominance."
Su Xinghe nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly.
"Exactly. Right now, in computers, communications, the internet—all the standards are set by foreigners. If this continues, we'll lose our innovation capabilities."
"Then let's innovate harder," Su Yuanshan said, scooping up another bite of food.
"I think you should be preparing for the new school year," Su Yuanshan's mother suddenly cut in, like a sharp blade.
"Huh?"
"Don't 'huh' me! Are you still planning to take leave? Lao Su, are you sure your son will really win the competition? What if people accuse you of favoritism?" Zhang Xiuyun slammed her chopsticks down, glaring at father and son.
Su Xinghe froze for a moment. The era of anonymous reporting was mostly over, but who could guarantee no one would get jealous?
But then he smiled proudly.
"I know my son. In programming, his peers can't even match one-tenth of his skills!"
Su Yuanshan coughed lightly, remembering the impressive source code he had seen earlier today...
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