forward from:
https://www.zhihu.com/question/20964366/answer/95202867
Author: Yao Yong
Typography Editor: GitHubDaily
Hello everyone.
When I was browsing Zhihu today, I happened to see an answer from Mr. Yao Yong, the nephew of Wang Xiaobo, a member of the original Shuimunianhua and the founder of "QQ Dance Dance", which described his memory of Wang Xiaobo's accomplishments in the field of programming. I have a new understanding of Wang Xiaobo, and now I will share it with you.
Below is the text:
The following text is written by myself. To make it easier to read, reduce ambiguity. I describe it from a third-person perspective in the text. Instead of "my uncle", "my grandmother", "my uncle", "my little uncle" and the like. This is a habit of a software engineer for more than ten years.
My uncle is Wang Xiaobo, and I am a common man who can't help but have a mediocre aptitude.
Wang Xiaobo's essay "How I Do Youth Thought Work" made me a personal advertisement to the greatest extent when I was young and single, and it was regarded as one of the most precious legacy his old man left me.
On top of that, there's his old PC, which he gave me a year before his death.
He is a master of assembler, and he wrote the Chinese character input method under DOS with assembler. The input method has a function that can add 4 sounds. The general Pinyin input method does not have this function, which requires users with correct pronunciation of Mandarin. In the 1990s, there were not many Chinese character input methods.
I have seen him type Chinese characters with his own input method, and the speed is almost the same as that of touch typing English. At that time, I was in college, and I was practicing the guitar like crazy, and I didn't understand what kind of technique he used.
Although I also used Z80 and APPLE II to do some machine code programming and games since elementary school, but in middle school for the college entrance examination, the computer was abandoned.
In the last few years of his life, WINDOWS 3.2 became popular, and then WIN95.
He started switching from DOS to WIN32 SDK programming. In the end, I stayed up all night and worked hard for a long time. I converted the input method to WIN32 SDK and worked normally under WINDOWS.
At that time, WINDOWS already had a lot of Chinese character input methods, especially in the WIN95 era, he did this only out of interest rather than a necessity in the DOS era. We also discussed a bit about the WIN32 SDK.
At that time win32 sdk was really hard to use. Mainly because the Internet has not yet (I used it after 1996), there is very little information, and the Hungarian nomenclature is unfamiliar. The system of WIN32 is very different from DOS, all of them are very unfamiliar, and completely abandoned the DOS stuff. The migration of all DOS low-level programmers to WIN32 in the 1990s is a history of blood and tears.
In the last year of his life, multimedia became popular. Optical drives, sound cards, and 2D accelerator cards are popular.
In 1995-96 he started working with me on multimedia publishing. The reason is very sad now that I think about it---his book is difficult to publish in the mainland, he has to find a way to make his works visible to more people, and he can only endure severe hemorrhoids every day to make a living. Write miscellaneous articles for various magazines.
The rise of multimedia made him feel that he might take advantage of his technology and create his own electronic publications. With illustrations, music, and e-books, you can make your work visible to the public.
He showed me a demo that had already been made, which is very similar to the electronic multimedia products made with Micromedia multimedia production software now.
The ebook content is golden age, with a patterned background, and you can turn pages by pressing the space. There's music at the same time, and there seems to be an occasional animation of special effects (I can't remember exactly). But the DEMO at that time was completely an EXE executable program written by himself in WIN32. When he transplanted the input method from the WIN32 SDK, he basically mastered the methods of message processing, GDI, and window control. There are also some underlying TRICKs.
After college, I was relatively close to Wang Xiaobo, and we met at his mother's house every weekend in those years. His mother has 5 children and he is the only one in the country. So he often lived at his mother's house, fearing that the old man would be a filial son alone.
Next to my mother's house is a 2-room hut, a public toilet and a water room. The heating is extremely hot in winter. Occasionally I would live with him. The back room was his living and writing desk, and the outer room was very small with only one bed. Occasionally, his brother's children and I would sleep in the outer room. What impressed me the most was the electric stove and glass teapot he used to burn Pu-erh tea. There was always very strong tea in it, and a lot of tea leaves were deposited under it.
Witnessing the second half of his life (from the time I can remember until his death, he has been out for many years), I have a lot of emotions.
Wang Xiaobo had an eighth uncle. At that time, he was planning to make a plate with both hands. He was extremely smart and a genius. Died young. Wang Xiaobo's father attracted Mao Zedong's attention because he was engaged in logic, and was interviewed by Mao to talk about academic issues related to logic.
69 died of a heart attack at home alone. Wang Xiaobo died in exactly the same way as his father, the only difference being that he was younger. Brother Wang Xiaobo had been digging coal for 10 years under the influence of the Cultural Revolution. Later, he went to the United States to study mathematical logic and solved a mathematical logic problem that had not been solved for more than 100 years. The final doctoral dissertation was not handled by the professor of my own department, so I specifically asked the professor of the Department of Mathematics to look at it. After graduating, his brother concentrated on opening a restaurant to earn money to raise his two daughters. Prepare for financial freedom and then write a biography.
My biggest emotion is that I am not afraid of running out of firewood if I keep the green hills. Whether a genius or an ordinary aptitude like me, everyone has only one life. Wang Xiaobo's mother, who was 92 years old last year, just passed away in October. The white-haired man sent off her two sons, and it took more than ten years to leave. I had cancer before, and I recovered by exercising with my own perseverance. One year after Wang Xiaobo's death, Wang Xiaobo's younger brother died suddenly. At that time, the child did not dare to tell the old man. The old lady didn't feel right, but she couldn't find out the truth. She just told me her suspicions. At that time, I was the only one in the country, so I could only hide it, and kept reassuring the old man that it was okay. The old lady murmured, "No big deal except death, no big deal except death."
Nothing but death. Life is alive, whatever hurdle you encounter will only be an ordinary node in your life. Over time, everything will become a thing of the past. Be reassured, perhaps this will lead to a sense of purpose that is not strong enough to compete with the social elite. But as long as you have patience and are not afraid of setbacks, your goals will always be achieved with time.
As a 42-year-old uncle who is still playing games and watching anime as the mainstay of his life, maintaining a healthy and energetic pursuit of wisdom and fun, doing work that he loves, maintaining kindness, and being a spiritually free person is what I learned from Wang Xiaobo's life. to the most important thing. I hope everyone who likes Wang Xiaobo will have their own fulfilling and healthy body and spirit.