Ugly WeChat

When the two of them returned to the university campus, it was already 10 p.m. at night.

After Lu Zhou dropped Ye Qingchen off upstairs, he returned to his own home.

He boiled a kettle of hot water, took out a coffee can from the kitchen, and made a cup of strong coffee. With a cup in one hand, he reached into his backpack and took out a cigarette.

He was ready to capture the moment of inspiration he had on the car today.

Even though Lu Zhou was a heavy user of WeChat, and even though he knew the important updates in various versions of WeChat, he still couldn't replicate an application like Penguin WeChat.

He could reverse engineer the product logic and design related sub-businesses, but the chances of the code implementation being identical were basically zero.

The same idea in the hands of two programmers would ultimately result in two different sets of code, even if the end result was the same.

Lu Zhou drew on paper his impression of the early version of WeChat's user interface.

"It's a bit too ugly..."

Unable to criticize anymore, he could only make do with looking at the "WeChat" on paper while dividing the product logic.

"Excluding a large number of subsequent updates, the most essential function of WeChat is communication."

He thought for a moment and divided the overall concept of WeChat into three basic services: entrance service, basic service, and social service.

The entrance service initially referred to login, registration, and authentication, and later would involve payment authentication.

The basic service included account personal information, address book, and friend relationships.

The social service included message sending and receiving, push notifications, and group functions.

When a user logs into WeChat, the WeChat client needs to call the entrance service program, authenticate the user's identity, and extract data from the local and server.

Unless the user logs out of the application and cancels the login status, there is no need to call the entrance service again.

Including payment authentication in the entrance service was also considered due to the involvement of financial transactions, where authentication was a necessary process.

Next, when a user modifies personal information or adds/deletes friends, the WeChat client needs to call the basic service program to query and modify the corresponding data.

And when users send and receive messages, it goes without saying that the social service is involved.

Among these three, the entrance service involves querying and authentication, the basic service involves low-frequency modifications, and social service involves heavy data read and write operations.

Lu Zhou referred to the ugly sketch while organizing the most basic functions of WeChat in the development document.

"If WeChat is developed for just a few people to use, it would be simple. But developing an application for a few people versus a national-level application, even if they are fundamentally the same, the difference in effort required is worlds apart."

For example, the entrance service. When only a few people use it, there won't be multiple people logging in at the same time. But with tens of millions or billions of users, the probability of such a situation greatly increases.

A simple login behavior, due to the increase in user volume, makes the dimensions of the problem incredibly complex.

Not to mention the social service, the technical difficulty in the midst of high-frequency usage.

Of course, no matter how troublesome it was, he still had to bite the bullet and proceed. Otherwise, Lu Zhou would be just like a penguin.

And besides, in any case, he had to start from the simplest lines of code step by step.

Lu Zhou took a picture of the sketch with his phone, then used Photoshop to process it, cutting the drawn icons into application icons and removing the background color.

At the same time, he pulled

up an Android application he had previously written from his computer code repository.

He made some simple adjustments to the application layout and color scheme, and then replaced the application icon. Thus, the ugliest frontend version of "WeChat" was born.

"..."

He helplessly chuckled, "It's unbelievably ugly, the color scheme, and the icon. I have no aesthetic sense."

Of course, he could only test and use it himself reluctantly, and afterwards, it would definitely need to be redesigned and adjusted by others.

With the ugliest "WeChat" in hand, Lu Zhou continued to refine some finer business logic based on the formed document and then began to build the overall underlying framework.

Sure, here's the modified text with "micro message" replaced by "WeChat":

Until three in the early morning, Lu Zhou stretched and yawned, appearing somewhat tired.

During this time, he spent most of his time reminiscing and filling in the document, and the specific framework was still unfinished.

He got up again, poured another cup of hot water, lit a cigarette, and stood by the balcony, looking at the dark night.

"The ugliest and most basic, it's almost there. But with iterations, there are still countless functional logics that need to be filled. Every simple function probably requires countless nights of exploration alone," Lu Zhou thought to himself.

He opened Weibo, used the sketch of the "WeChat" as an accompanying image, and posted a message, "First-generation product. The ugliest WeChat is officially born."

As the cigarette burned out, Lu Zhou went to bed and fell asleep.

He woke up at 11 a.m. the next day and sent a text message to Ye Qingchen, saying he had something to do. Then he contacted Wen Xuwei.

Lu Zhou asked, "Wen Ge, are you awake?"

"Just got up and brushed my teeth, haha. What's up?" Wen Xuwei replied.

"It seems like you were thinking about something good last night again. Do you have any plans for lunch? Let's have a meal together, my treat."

"Sure, let's meet nearby. Lao Song has been driving me crazy with some new application engine called 'HeartWave,' and I've been busy with it."

"Haha, that's my fault. Let's meet up for some Northeastern cuisine. I'll be there in a bit."

"Okay."

After hanging up the phone, Lu Zhou went out to the restaurant.

"Waiter, let's order."

"Braised Pork in Soy Sauce, Sour and Spicy Pork Ribs, and Three Delicacies. Bring these three dishes first, and two bowls of rice later."

Just as Lu Zhou handed the menu to the waiter, Wen Xuwei also arrived at the lobby of the Northeastern cuisine restaurant.

He waved at Wen Xuwei.

"What's up, Wen Ge? Lao Song had you working on the HeartWave application engine?"

Wen Xuwei, who was slightly chubby and afraid of heat, sat down and immediately drank three cups of tea.

"Phew. Not really, just doing research and figuring things out. But you know, the projects the company is currently working on have nothing to do with this at all. The most important thing is that the new colleagues and interns are like blank slates and can't be led."

Lu Zhou couldn't help but shake his head after hearing this. After sharing his ideas about DreamGrain Cloud Computing with Lao Song, he ended up taking action after all.

Although it was just research, Lu Zhou suspected that Lao Song was afraid of making a wrong judgment, so he assigned Wen Xuwei to do related work.

"Haha, I actually brought it up to Lao Song. I'm also planning to do cloud computing. I mentioned a few words to Lao Song before, and it ended up falling on your shoulders."

"Oh, there's that too? Can't you stop for a while? At least consider the capacity of my heart."

To be honest, Lu Zhou had risen to fame in just a month, and Wen Xuwei was naturally very tempted.

But he also recognized that he didn't have the vision that Lu Zhou possessed, to see the right direction for him to start a business.

"Forget it. You stay up late coding every day during the holidays, and I don't even know how many times your heart has failed."

Lu Zhou jokingly said, "There's

nothing else today. I really am planning to do cloud computing. Are you interested in joining?"