bestfiction Chapter 350 Eric's Proposal
Chapter 350 Eric's Proposal
He put down the plan and leaned back in his chair. He went over Eric's words in his mind: "Break down the core modules," "Maintain them independently by different teams," "This will significantly improve efficiency."
Yes, this approach does increase efficiency. However, it also means that the core code is no longer under his sole control. After being broken down, each team only knows the part they are responsible for, and no one can see the whole picture.
Ling Yun picked up the plan again, turned to the page on module breakdown, and studied it for a long time.
Then he picked up the phone and called Li Mo. Ling Yun was able to go on vacation entirely thanks to Li Mo keeping an eye on things in Silicon Valley. As Xingchen's code reviewer, he had the same, and highest, authority as Ling Yun—even higher than Eric's.
"Li Mo, come to my office."
Soon, Li Mo pushed open the door and came in. "President Ling." Li Mo sat down opposite him.
Ling Yun pushed the stack of proposals over, "Take a look at this."
Li Mo took it and started flipping through it. He read it very quickly, finishing in about ten minutes, and then put the plan down.
Who wrote it?
"Eric".
Li Mo remained silent for a few seconds.
"Do you think there's a problem?" Ling Yun asked.
Li Mo thought for a moment, "The plan itself is fine. It's well-written and logically sound. But..."
"But what?"
"But he broke down the memory management part too into too many pieces." Li Mo pointed to one of the pages. "Look here, what was originally one module was split into three. These three modules will communicate very frequently, which will definitely reduce performance. If performance is not a concern, then there is only one benefit to doing it this way—each module only knows its own part, which reduces the chance of code leaks."
Ling Yun looked at him and said, "In other words, the person who masters each module has absolute control over that module. Adding or deleting code is not easily detected by others. Check his code commit history for the past year."
Li Mo stood up. "I'll go now."
It was already two in the morning, and Ling Yun was still sitting in his office. Only the light on his desk was on; the rest of the room was dark.
Li Mo pushed the door open and came in. He was holding a stack of printing papers, and his expression was not good.
"Did you find anything?"
Li Mo walked over and placed the stack of papers on the table. "I've gone through all of his submissions from the past year." Li Mo's voice was a little hoarse, probably from staying up late. "He started acting strangely three months ago."
Ling Yun picked up the stack of papers. On top was a code snippet, printed on both sides, the old one on the left and the new one on the right.
"Look at this," Li Mo pointed to the section on the right, "This is the optimized code for the memory management module that he submitted last month. Now look at the left side, this is the same piece he wrote last year."
Lingyun examined the code closely. The comments on the left were simple: "allocate memory," "free memory," and "return pointer." The comments on the right were more detailed, but the style was different. The comments on the left were "//allocate," while the comments on the right were "/* allocate memory block */."
"Have you noticed?" Li Mo said, "His annotations used to be all abbreviated, the simpler the better. But in the last few months, they've become very formal, like he's writing a textbook."
Lingyun turned to the next page, which was another module, the network protocol stack section. The comment on the left was "// send data", and the comment on the right was "/* send data via TCP socket */".
Turn the page again to the file system section. On the left is "//read file", and on the right is "/* read file in read mode*/".
"The style has completely changed," Li Mo said. "And it didn't change gradually, it changed all at once. Three months ago, it suddenly became like this."
Lingyun flipped to the last page. This page didn't contain code; it was a comparison of two algorithmic logic pieces. The one on the left was written by Eric before, and the one on the right was written more recently.
"This is the most troublesome." Li Mo pointed to the section on the right. "Look at the optimization approach of this sorting algorithm. It's different from what we used to do. At first, I thought he came up with it himself, but then it looked familiar."
"look familiar?"
"Hmm." Li Mo took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on the table. "I checked, and this is a patent that Microsoft applied for in 1998. It has the exact same algorithm logic as this one."
The paper contains a public document from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, patent number US5432849, with the abstract highlighted in a highlighter.
Ling Yun picked it up and looked at the page of code. The optimization approach described in the patent was indeed the same as that in Eric's code. Not just similar, but identical; even the parameter names were the same.
He put down the patent and the code. Li Mo stood beside him, without moving.
After a long silence, Ling Yun spoke, "Besides you, who else knows?"
"There was no one else, so I logged into the code repository myself and checked Eric's commit history."
"This is something we must keep to ourselves; we can't let anyone else know about it right now."
Li Mo looked at him, "President Ling..."
"I know, let me think about what to do next."
Li Mo didn't say anything more. He stood there for a few seconds, then turned and left. The door closed very softly.
Ling Yun sat there alone. He picked up the proposal, then put it down. He picked up the code, then put it down again. He picked up the patent and studied it for a long time.
Then he stacked everything together, stuffed it into the bottom of the drawer, and locked it.
He stood up and walked to the window. He looked at the car lights on the highway in the distance, red and yellow, flowing back and forth.
He remembered March 1997, the day he first met Eric. Eric was wearing that faded plaid shirt, his hair was a little messy, and his glasses reflected the light. He said, "Ling, my company hasn't paid us for three months."
He recalled that in February 1998, at two in the morning, the two of them were working on code until they were exhausted, leaning back in their chairs staring at the ceiling. Eric suddenly sat up and said, "I know." Then he typed out a bunch of code, pressed enter, and a green "Success" popped up on the screen.
He recalled May 1999, the night before the IPO, when everyone was working overtime. He only learned the next day that it was Eric's daughter's birthday, and he hadn't gone home at all.
Ling Yun stood by the window, watching the sky slowly brighten. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
Although unwilling to believe it, as the evidence piled up, Ling Yun decided to take action. Although he had a backup plan, it was a defensive measure. It would be impolite not to take advantage of what others had. Ling Yun was also prepared to take some measures to prevent them from plotting against him so brazenly.
Ling Yun began preparing an email, arranging for Eric to go to the Shanghai Xingchen Research Institute to guide the institute's organizational development.