Lei Jun: The First Barrel Of Gold I Made

08, 04, August 1989, during my sophomore summer vacation, Wang Quanguo and I wrote my first official work.

At that time, BITLOK was very famous. Many well-known software companies bought our products, such as UFIDA, Jinshan and so on.

When writing BITLOK, I didn't expect to earn much money just because I liked it.

According to Wang's latest recollection, after writing BITLOK 0.99, he gave me $50 overtime.

To sum up, this is the first money I wrote for BITLOK.

Unexpectedly, BITLOK sold well, and we made millions of dollars.

This is the first pot of gold I earn in my life.

I enclose my BITLOK development process written in BBS in May 1996, in memory of my ten year programmer career.

I wrote BITLOK for seven years.

Written in May 1996 at Jinshan West Point BBS

BITLOK is an encryption software developed by my friends and amateur.

I have been involved in the development since eight or nine years ago. It has been seven years, and BITLOK has risen from the first 0.99 edition to the 3 edition.

Seven years is not long for the journey of life, but it is not too short for the development of a small product.

In the past seven years, I have tasted the ups and downs of a product development process.

In 87 years, I went to the computer department of Wuhan University, and I was fascinated by computers from the first computer professional course.

Since learning computer, I seem to have no other hobbies. The computer has become the only thing in my life at that time.

I no longer have the boundless Kan Shan in my dormitory and the leisure time in the library. I no longer have the quiet of late self study and the bustle of the weekend movie theater. I even hesitate to skip classes in order to study computers.

I started learning computer from the bubble room.

In those days, computers were not so popular now, and there were no more than fifteen PC computers in the computer room.

My solution to the problem is to soak and stay in the computer room every day.

My best luck is that other people do not come and have free machines. If someone does not understand, I can use the guidance machine for a while.

Bubble room is also a very painful matter, sometimes encounter a bad room manager, dead or alive will not let you in.

If you want to soak up the computer room, you must queue up in front of the gate one hour in advance. There is no heating in winter in Wuhan. It's very cold. But in the computer room, you must wear slippers. Next to our computer room is a tuyere, which has been frozen and shivering for more than an hour in front of the computer room. But I still enjoy it.

Later, I went too often, so that the computer room administrator saw me, and did not ask if he had a ticket.

The opportunity to learn computers is so difficult that even when computers are used at random, playing games still has a sense of guilt and a waste of time.

First, step into the development journey.

At the very beginning, I laughed at myself by BITLOK.

In the next semester of sophomore year, what I wanted to learn at school was almost the same, and I had a particularly strong desire to write: what software could I write to let everyone use it?

At that time, I believed that in the domestic software, we must master the two key technologies of Chinese processing and encryption.

Chinese is an obstacle to China's software development. It makes it difficult for Chinese users to enjoy the latest software achievements in the world synchronously, and is also a natural barrier to China's software industry. A programmer who is not growing up in the Chinese cultural environment is very hard to break through this barrier, so Chinese will protect the Chinese software industry, and it is also the market and hope of Chinese software.

Encryption technology is the guarantee of product sales, and domestic piracy is serious.

In order to write software in the future is more convenient, I consider writing an encryption tool.

In the first half of eight or nine years, I wrote a prototype.

Later, this prototype could become a product, mainly because I knew my partner Wang Quanguo.

At that time, there was such a coincidence in the world. When I wrote the kernel of encryption software, he was writing the interface of encryption software, and cooperation became a natural thing.

We plan to build a practical software in half a month.

Finally, we completed the plan on time, and I remember clearly that it was completed in August 17, 1989.

In this cooperation, the workload is very heavy, and the work is very hard. Generally, from work till two or three in the night, I sleep on the sofa on the same clothes, and others work at eight o'clock on the second day. We have to get up.

Half a month later, two people lost a large circle, and dirty clothes accumulated a lot.

One Sunday, we went out to eat from morning till evening, and saw the sunset. At that time, everyone made a joke: when we saw the sun, the sun had already set down.

Although our development took only half a month, we decided not to think that we would persist in developing it for seven years.

After the product was finished, we were very excited and thought it would be a good name for our development team.

I have seen a movie before, called mysterious yellow rose, which is a mysterious person who eliminates violence and security. We do encryption software in order to control piracy, so we use this story to be named "yellow rose".

We name the product BITLOK, and the version number is 0.99, because the product has a distance from the real version.

In this way, BITLOK 0.99 was born.

This version was not successful, but it inspired my enthusiasm and confidence in developing software, and then developed several small products.

At that time, I was filled with pride. The story of Silicon Valley heroes was always burning my chest. I often dreamed of creating a first-class software company one day, all over the world using our software, so it was not too much to develop these small products.

I laughed at myself by BITLOK.

Two, start all over again.

In the days when happiness was not shared, I finished BITLOK 1 on my own.

Beijing is the holy land of China's computer industry.

When I graduated, I was very persistent about going to Beijing, just like flying e to fight fire.

I think Beijing is much more informed than Wuhan, and the market is much larger.

When other students chose Shenzhen and Guangzhou to tell the money there, I was not at all excited.

With the mood of doing a great undertaking, he was assigned to a research institute and participated in a large project.

Although I worked in the suburbs and got very little pay, I didn't care about it, but I couldn't find the feeling of participating in big projects.

During that time, time passed very slowly, and I didn't know how to kill it.

At this time, I met Su Qiqiang, who was deputy general manager of UFIDA, and he suggested that I continue to develop encryption software.

In this way, although I am unwilling to develop small products, I have no choice but to continue to develop the new version of BITLOK.

From the first version of development to my university graduation, it has been two years, the level has improved, looking back at the past products, decided to push down the rewrite.

Writing software at this time is much more troublesome than before. During the day, we have to go to work. Although there is not much work to do in the office, we can not do anything else. We will go to Zhongguancun to have friends at weekends.

In this way, my time is from Monday to Friday evening.

At that time, in order to save time, I often used hours to schedule evening schedules.

Sometimes, if we fail to make a plan, we will work all night.

Although it is hard to work all night, there is also some kind of spiritual comfort.

Every morning, when I was alone in front of the computer, I had a great spirit to inspire me: I was working while others slept.

At this time, the noise of computer fans and the sound of knocking keyboards became pleasant music.

The most profound memory of the whole night is four o'clock in the morning. When the program was finished, it crashed and saved the backup files into zero bytes, and I had to demonstrate the program for second days.

I couldn't have rewritten the whole evening work. I was all in bed and didn't know what to say.

I woke up with my dorm friend and helped me find the first sector from the hard disk. It took me two hours to find it all.

My friend later joked that I was crying.

At that time, from the beginning of the hard work, because of the beginning of the work, not good sense of late, can barely force themselves to sleep less.

But the biggest pain I face is not hardship, nor is it too low, but happiness is not shared by others.

Whenever I encounter a difficulty, no one will help me solve it; when I spend a lot of effort to solve it, I am so happy that I can't dance.

It is better to have fun with others than to be alone. In that period of time, it is impossible to have fun with everyone.

How sad it is!

In the days of happiness and no one to share, I finally finished BITLOK 1.

As a product of development, if there is no support from users and friends, this is very sad, but a developer is only brave enough to be lonely and willing to be lonely, and may also develop good products.

This version of software was later selected by many software companies, such as UFIDA, hyper idea, Jinshan and so on. BITLOK encrypted software has been used in over one million computers.

This is the most inspiring thing for me.

Three, real commodity software

It is not enough to commercialize software.

In order to realize the dream of developing big software, I volunteered to join Kingsoft software, and invited my former partners to join us.

In the development of large software, which is part of the later Pangu component, the development of BITLOK can only be amateur.

In Kimama Yuai's environment, many colleagues helped me to do a lot of work. It is worth mentioning that after completing a version, my colleagues will try to decrypt and find out the problem, then tell me, I will perfect it again, so many times, and finally finalize it.

BITLOK 1.2 is developed by collective strength.

At this time, BITLOK is already a perfect commodity software, but it has never been sold on the shelf as a real commodity software.

BITLOK is technically quite mature, but speaking from the market, it is equivalent to the work of a laboratory.

In the past 93 years, a friend was interested in promoting sales. I insist that BITLOK is an amateur product.

Later, with the repeated persuasion of this friend, BITLOK had the chance to put it on the shelf.

This friend is very dedicated, product promotion and technical services have made great efforts, BITLOK quickly won a lot of customers.

BITLOK in our technology plus this friend's publicity and service, has become a real commodity.

If a product does not have many guarantees such as marketing, sales and after-sale service, it is not a real commodity software.

Without the promotion of that friend, BITLOK would never become a real commodity software.

I always feel grateful for this friend.

Obviously, commercialization of software is not enough without technology.

Four, promise eternal

Products not only belong to developers, but also to users.

In the next few years, BITLOK has been developing and publishing a series of versions. Many users have been using them. They have put forward many good suggestions. We also insist on integrating their opinions into products.

In this way, BITLOK is also more popular with users.

From this point, I get a conclusion that products are the product of cooperation between developers and users. Products are not only developers, but also users.

If BITLOK is better than similar software, it is adopting user opinions.

BITLOK has made some achievements, but we have analyzed the market of encryption software calmly, and found several problems. First, the encryption software is only used by developers, the market is very small, the whole market is less than one thousand sets per year, as an amateur interest, it can also be accepted as a development project of the company. Two, with the prosperity of the software market, some domestic software began to test the method of not encrypting sales, which is the trend of the development of the software market.

Many friends think that encryption software is not needed.

I am also very confused: can I do it or not?

Many friends who know that I have developed encryption software often tell me some new decryption methods and decryption tools. The old users are also continuing to telephone to inquire about the development of the new version and make suggestions for modification.

At this time, I feel a lot of pressure: the product is also a user, not I want to stop can stop.

If you can't become a company's development project, you will continue to develop it as an interest. It's just that I work harder.

No matter what, BITLOK has many users to upgrade and maintain.

As for future market development, there is a long process.

Besides, in the United States, there are still many professional encryption software.

In the past, I always thought BITLOK was a small product and developed by interest.

With the support of so many users behind BITLOK, I can't agree with my previous view. These users make me feel stressed and have a lot of responsibility.

Whether or not there is any economic benefit, I am determined to write a brand new 3, thoroughly solve all the problems raised by users in the past, and let the past users have an opportunity to upgrade.

This year, I have been hoping to have a whole time to rewrite my own program, but my daily work is very heavy.

It took me a few months to rewrite all the code with the help of many friends.

It is no longer a matter of repair on the original basis. In the years of revision, BITLOK has exceeded thirty thousand lines of code.

As an amateur process, it is not too short, it is also difficult to modify.

But all of them must have great courage to rewrite their own procedures.

On the basis of previous experience, I used some breakthroughs, and I spent a lot of effort finishing BITLOK 3.

No matter how BITLOK 3 writes, I do my best.

I think if BITLOK is still available, I will definitely take the time to maintain it. If no one is using it, I will wash my hands when I die.