Chinese Version
06-18-2016，Friday
Today is Friday and the crowded Paypal parking lot on the North First Street in San Jose was very empty. Friday is often called Happy Friday and my colleagues usually get together to go out for lunch on Fridays to relax and catch up. As I was very busy with a POC, proof of concept, project for a few weeks now, I did not go out for lunch but had my lunch alone in the garden near the pond, in order to relax myself and to think through the challenges I was facing for the POC project. POC “is a realization of a certain method or idea in order to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle with the aim of verifying that some concept or theory has practical potential. A proof of concept is usually small and may or may not be complete.”
This POC project intended to add a new way of acceptance and treatment to an existing large software system. This task was similar to a worker digging into the ground using an excavator and trying to figure out how to insert a new pipeline under an existing sewer system. The excavator, new pipelines, and various input valves of the POC project were invisible but real and smelly. I had to learn the existing system well in order to excavate smoothly without damaging the old pipeline system and to limit any potential errors.
While trying to connect the new input valves to the old pipelines, I encountered many mismatches between them. Resolving the mismatch was a challenge: should I modify the old existing system to fit the new input data format or adjust the new input data format to fit the old ones? Unexpected problems had appeared during the earlier research phase of the POC, just like layers of an onion, the problems showed up layer by layer, seemingly endless. I used my previous working experience to come up with solutions while facing new problems. The early phase of POC is a gradual process, often a big step forward and a small step backward. As I was sorting out unknown and unexpected things bit by bit, the POC project was a cumbersome task that took lots of time without really any progress to report.
Once the old system was hooked with new pipelines and valves, I needed to stimulate inputs to test the upgraded software system by triggering as many if-else pathways inside the system as possible. Modifying the software system was still different from modifying an underground sewer pipeline.
Today is a software engineer’s original workday.
Little Episodes
1. 2016-06-10, Happy Friday. I and my colleagues went out to have a lunch today. We, including born in the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s and 1960s, covered the major spectrum of ages in our workplace. While eating the delicious food, pretty girl, handsome boys and me talked and laughed. Happy Friday！
2. 2021-11-16, under the protection of the police, workers were digging a hole on the road.
