Назад око 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, једноставан за крајње кориснике, неукусан, више језика, итд. Sad to say, Вероватно нису имали као амбициозни скуп рада да се оствари, јер тих оних дана.
This effort pre-dated Microsoft.NET. Plain vanilla ASP was still somewhat new (или бар врло непознате мојој фирми). "Brick and mortar" companies were doomed. Проклет! This is to say that it was pioneering work. Није Хадрон Цоллидер пионирски рад, али за нас у нашем малом свету, је пионирски рад.
We were crazy busy. We were doing mini POC’s almost every day, схватила како да одрже стање у својственом медиј без држављанства, фигуринг мулти-језичким питањима, row-level security. We even had create a vocabulary to define basic terms (Сам волео државе упорни али из неког разлога, the awkward "statefull" освојио дан).
Као што смо били лудо измишљање овај производ, 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, јер смо увек фокусирани на шпанском или француском језику, али у овом случају, да је кинески (што је двобајтни скуп карактера и захтева посебно руковање с обзиром на технологију коју смо).
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:
- Американац: "Could you tell me how to get to [КСКС] улица?"
- Кинески: "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
- Американац: "Oh, добро говорим мандарински." и питао их поново на кинеском, али јасније (најбоље што је могао).
- Кинески: Врло љубазно, "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 [КСКС] улица."
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" у смислу ме притиска у лоше пословне одлуке.
- Није нам било дозвољено да возе аутомобиле (је дошло до забуне да ли је то обичај, правни захтев или само клијента правило).
- Било је посебна правила за одлазак преко границе.
- Нисмо смели да користе амерички новац ни за шта.
- You’re not supposed to leave tips. It’s insulting if you do.
И на крају, Имао сам релативно свежа сећања Тјенанмен масакр. When I was at college, I remember seeing real-time Usenet postings as the world looked on in horror.
Укратко, 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.
Ја сам на ово 14 сата лета и иако је била у бизнис класи, 14 сати је проклето дуго времена. Постоји само толико много начина да се забавите читајући, watching movies or playing with the magnetized cutlery. Even a really good book is hard to read for several hours straight.
Коначно, Почео сам да читам амбалажу на комад софтвера сам руком носећи са собом клијенту, Netscape’s web server. I’m reading the hardware/software requirements, маркетиншке Блурбс, гледајући у лепу слику и изненада, I zero in on the giant "NOT FOR EXPORT" упозорење, нешто о 128 bit encryption. I stuffed the box back into my carry bag, упозоравајући лицем надоле (као да би се помогло) и покушао да задржи визије Миднигхт Екпресс out of my head.
Осврћући се на њему сада, Требало је да будем забринут, ако је уопште, када сам напустио САД, 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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