Geri ətrafında 1998, the company I worked for at the time received some funding to create a new e-commerce product. We had the full gamut of business requirements to meet. It had to be fast, son istifadəçilər üçün asan, çığıran, çox dil, və s.. Sad to say, Mən yəqin ki, o sərxoş gündən yerinə yetirmək üçün iş iddialı bir dəst kimi idi yoxdur.
This effort pre-dated Microsoft.NET. Plain vanilla ASP was still somewhat new (mənim şirkət və ya ən çox müəmmalı). "Brick and mortar" companies were doomed. Məhkum! This is to say that it was pioneering work. Not Hadron Collider ilk iş, lakin bizim kiçik dünya, iş öncülük edilib.
We were crazy busy. We were doing mini POC’s almost every day, bir mahiyyət vətəndaşlığı olmayan orta dövlət qorumaq üçün necə figuring, çox dil məsələləri həyata figuring, row-level security. We even had create a vocabulary to define basic terms (Mən dövlət davamlı üstünlük lakin nədənsə, the awkward "statefull" Bu gün qalib).
Biz dəlicəsinə bu məhsul keşfetmeye kimi, the marketing and sales people were out there trying to sell it. Somehow, they managed to sell it to our nightmare scenario. Even though we were designing and implementing an enterprise solution, we really didn’t expect the first customer to use every last feature we built into the product day zero. This customer needed multi-language, a radically different user interface from the "standard" system but with the same business logic. Multi-language was especially hard in this case, biz həmişə ispan və ya fransız diqqət çünki, lakin bu halda, o Çin idi (Hansı istifadə olunan texnologiya verilmiş bir cüt bayt character set və xüsusi rəftar edir).
Fast forward a few months and I’m on a Northwest airlines flight to Beijing. I’ve been so busy preparing for this trip that I have almost no idea what it’s like to go there. I had read a book once about how an American had been in China for several years and had learned the language. One day he was walking the city and asked some people for directions. The conversation went something this:
- Amerika: "Could you tell me how to get to [XX] küçə?"
- Çin: "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
- Amerika: "Oh, yaxşı mən Mandarin danışmaq." və Çin dilində yenidən xahiş, lakin daha dəqiq (o ola bilər ki, ən yaxşı).
- Çin: Çox nəzakətlə, "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
The conversation went on like that for bit and the American gave up in frustration. As he was leaving them he overheard one man speaking to the other, "I could have sworn he was asking for directions to [XX] küç."
I had picked up a few bits and pieces of other China-related quasi-information and "helpful advice":
- A Korean co-worked told me that the I needed to be careful of the Chinese because "they would try to get me drunk and take advantage of you" pis iş qərarlar məni təzyiq hissi ilə.
- Biz avtomobil idarə etmək buraxılmayıblar (Bu xüsusi olub üçün bir çaşqınlıq var idi, hüquqi tələb və ya müştərinin qayda).
- Gömrük yaşayır üçün xüsusi qaydalar var idi.
- Biz bir şey Amerika pul istifadə buraxılmayıblar.
- You’re not supposed to leave tips. It’s insulting if you do.
Və nəhayət,, Mən nisbətən təzə xatirələr də var Tiananmen soyqırımı. When I was at college, I remember seeing real-time Usenet postings as the world looked on in horror.
Qısa, I was very nervous. I wasn’t just normal-nervous in the sense that I was delivering a solution that was orders of magnitude more complicated than anything I had ever done before. I was also worried about accidentally breaking a rule that could get me in trouble.
Bu barədə Ben 14 saat uçuş və biznes sinif idi, 14 saat damned uzun vaxt. Okuyarak özünüzü əyləndirmək üçün yalnız bir çox yolu var, watching movies or playing with the magnetized cutlery. Even a really good book is hard to read for several hours straight.
Nəhayət, Mən proqram bir parça üzrə qablaşdırma materialı oxumaq üçün açılmış Mən müştəri üçün mənə əl balans idi, Netscape’s web server. I’m reading the hardware/software requirements, marketinq blurbs, Þirin şəkil baxan və birdən-birə, I zero in on the giant "NOT FOR EXPORT" xəbərdarlıq, haqqında bir şey 128 bit encryption. I stuffed the box back into my carry bag, üz-aşağı xəbərdarlıq (oldu ki, guya) və fikirlərin saxlamağa cəhd Midnight Express out of my head.
İndi geri Axtarıram, Mən narahat olmalı, əgər, ABŞ gedəndə, not when I was entering China 🙂 Nothing untoward happened and I still consider that to be the best and most memorable business trip I’ve had the pleasure of making.
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