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Critical moment, the first time to arrive!

Don’t ask: “XX years old, learning XX, is it too late?”

It’s never too late to mend.

If you have the heart, what will be too late, just need to pay more efforts, just to see whether they are willing to!

This article would like to share with you the story of wu Zuzeng, an 84-year-old technician. He successfully moved from the initial medical field to the Internet industry, and later became knowledgeable in mathematics, physics, electronic engineering, computer hardware and software, as well as profound experience in graphics, images and algorithms. Today still keep updating his blog (http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu), than the tail of The Times, in the wake of technology trends, true interpretation of what is the meaning of “never too old to learn”.

Note: See the link at the end of this article for the notes below.

Colorful life experience

Quietly recall the past, seems to have passed for a long time, but just like yesterday.

I was born in 1933 in jiaxing, zhejiang new Cheng [1], the refugees during the Anti-Japanese War to the zhuji ZhaoJia Town my grandma’s, in Zhao Jialan elementary school, the third grade had left a term for refugees, and after graduation to enter oneself for an examination zhuji fengqiao, a high school admission, but did not go to and a term in LAN remediation, over the course of zhao, spent eight years after seven years of the war of resistance against Japan.

FIG. 1 Panoramic view of my birthplace — Xincheng Wurun Zhaoprivate Courtyard, Jiaxing

In the spring of 1946, after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, I moved to Shaoxing and was admitted to Shaoxing No.1 Middle School. After finishing middle school, he entered high school and spent five years in peace until the second semester of his second year in high school. Recall this period of young years, one of the most unforgettable junior high school when an exam. Because at that time, in addition to Shaoxing, as well as many surrounding counties of primary school graduates, a total of more than 500 people participated in the examination, only 100 were admitted, among them there is no lack of “day no. 1”, fierce competition, and I was admitted to the seventh. This success is not only related to the past review, the most important is also inseparable from my father before the exam to help me review.

In 1950, I signed up for the army in the voice of “resist the United States and aid Korea”. In January 51, I went to a military dry school and studied medicine in Sandun, Hangzhou. After studying basic medicine for one year, he was transferred to Zhejiang Medical College (now Zhejiang Medical University) to study histology for one semester, and then returned to the army to engage in teaching work for half a year. He graduated in two years and stayed in school as a technician. After graduation, he studied embryology for one semester at the Second Military Medical University and continued to work for two more years. I spent a total of more than four years in the army. I had been to eight places in four cities — Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou — for further study or relocation of my unit. Until the end of March, 55, I was demobilized from Nanjing.

FIG. 2 Parting souvenir of zhejiang Medical College

After demobilization, he returned to Shaoxing and taught himself at home for more than four months. After that, he was admitted to the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics of Peking University with the same degree as his first choice. This exam is also unforgettable, because it is very hard to prepare for the exam. I did not learn the high school curriculum before joining the army. In order to apply for the university, I had to study by myself from beginning to end. I especially required myself to finish all the exercises of geometry and physics in high school, and I did not miss a single one. Before taking an examination of my weight has more than 60 kilograms, admitted to Peking University after a check weight only 45 kilograms.

The length of study in the department of Mathematics at Peking University is 5 years. I was classified as a math major. From grade 1 to grade 3, I took basic mathematics and physics courses, and from grade 4 to grade 5, I specialized in cybernetic and studied mathematical logic, algorithm theory, information theory and computer related courses. My graduation thesis is to develop “Program Design Automation” for Su Jie б э CM machine. The so-called “program design automation”, is actually to use machine language to make an assembly, but its function requirements are very high, some aspects and advanced language as well as even more than, because the requirements can solve some equations of the calculation problem. This is a big topic, by the full specialization of more than ten people and the department of the third grade students together, divided into 4 groups, respectively consider the entire program design automation required by the arithmetic operator, loop operator, special operator, truth operator four parts of the programming. I joined the arithmetic operator group. The subject was led by Mr. Ding Shisun, who later served as the president of Peking University, and coached by several young teachers, Chen Mutian, Yang Fuqing and Chen Kunqiu. The whole program has not been tested at last, because Peking University does not have a б э CM machine at all, students have to go to THE Chinese Academy of Sciences to try it, and students have no chance to try it themselves, so teachers have to debug it for them, which delays the time. Mr. Ding later said that it was his “greatest regret in life” that he did not lead our team to complete this project.

After graduation in 1960, HE was assigned to the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics of Fudan University. Then he was transferred to the Department of Computer science, the Department of Physics, the Department of Electronic Engineering and the Department of Microelectronics. He was engaged in the teaching of more than ten courses, such as mathematical logic, calculus and computer, and engaged in VLSI design, testing, analysis and other scientific research. Then there was a period of time in the department and school run factory work.

In 1993, at the age of 60, I began to retire. At that time, the university hired me as a consultant for the CAI lab, helping some students with software development until the director of the CAI lab retired and the CAI lab closed. After retirement, I also developed application software for some units at the invitation of my colleagues, and also engaged in computer teaching for examinees in and out of school. This continued for eight years until 2001, when I stayed at home to do things I was interested in, including reading books and newspapers, surfing the Internet, creating websites, participating in forums, writing blogs to reflect on my work, or being invited to translate books individually or with others [2].

The road of leapfrog technology transformation

Perhaps the best fortune in life is to do what you love.

Although there seemed to be many changes in my career, I finally chose my interest. There are hidden reasons for the transformation.

Medicine. I only learned basic medicine for one year, and then I studied basic courses. The fundamental reason is that I like mathematics since childhood, and I don’t like the possibility of being assigned to hospitals to deal with medicine in the future.

Department of mathematics to computer science. First of all, I like to install radio, multimeter, signal generator and other electronic products in my spare time. In the spring of 1964, the mathematics department arranged me to do computer maintenance work in the 130 computer room of the department. In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, I took time to go to the computer room of the 602 machine made by the mathematics Department alone to sort out a complete set of materials. After the revolution in ’68, I used these materials to open a course on computer principles in a number of training classes. Therefore, when the Department of Computer science was established in Fudan university, it was natural for me to transfer to the department together with all the teachers who were involved in computer teaching.

From computer department to physics department. This was the requirement of the Physics department at that time. The physics Department hoped that the computer Department could assign a teacher to help them teach computer principles. Then I accepted the arrangement of the leader and went to the Physics Department. There are many professional teaching and research groups in the Physics department, including semiconductor devices, semiconductor materials, semiconductor physics, radio circuits, etc. I went to the radio Circuits teaching and research group, but I also taught students from other majors.

From physics to electrical engineering. This was in 1979 when the Department of Electronic Engineering applied for a national project under the name of ZB-781 project to build a line of VLSI design and plate making. This requires many people, including maintaining computers and working on software design. When I went to the department, I had just bought a DJS-130 machine and a TectroniX-4014 graphics display terminal from Japan from Suzhou Wireless Power Plant, but the manufacturer had not trained us or many buyers, and the two devices were not connected. The first thing I did when I came to the Department of Electronic Engineering was to participate in the airport pickup training, get familiar with the performance of TectroniX-4014, and design and make an 8-bit interface to connect the Domestic DJS-130 machine with the imported TectroniX-4014.

As for the transfer from the department of electrical engineering to the Department of microelectronics, it was several years after I retired. At that time, the analysis group had been renamed asIC Design Center. Due to the large number of people, it was later separated from the electronic engineering department and became the Microelectronics Department.

Success and failure in scientific career

True and false, right and wrong.

In my whole life, I have taught more than 10 courses [4], of which only a few mathematics courses were learned in college. The rest were taught by self-study, and most of them were self-compiled handouts [2], which I think was basically successful. In terms of scientific research, whether it is hardware or software, or whether it belongs to my major or not, I try my best to do it after accepting it. Many of them are tasks that others cannot do, are not good at, or can’t think of to do [5], among which:

  • In 1969 for the Shanghai red guard tanneries mask design 5 a silicon planar power tube map [6] – this is the Shanghai specially designed transistor components factory do indicators, with their design mask to produce high power tube can only out of 3 a, the factory has also called fudan to semiconductor physics to improve the design, but also answer not, later to me for help. I, as a complete layman finally spent three weeks of study design is completed, after drawing from the factory to plate making and test, was a success, a large number of production, after “until the warehouse with, and to build the building”, created a huge wealth (when a 5 a high-power tube to sell 117 yuan, 3 tubes to sell only one or two gold).

  • 73-75, many components of IC test system design [7] – this is with a few units such as Shanghai calculation of the design personnel to complete the work, I did some tedious several design work, this is also indirectly create enormous wealth for the society, when Shanghai several components factory produce integrated circuit output value more than 10, But you can’t sell an integrated circuit if it’s not tested.

  • Fast optimal channel routing algorithm FOCR [8] from 79 to 82 — this is a software which is well received or not understood by Chinese and foreign peers. It is several times to dozens of times faster than the original software abroad, and can be more orders of magnitude in special cases.

  • 81-82 rugged channel routing algorithm DOCR [9] — this is very useful but domestic and foreign counterparts can not do or think of doing.

  • 84 years of the first generation of id card shading curve drawing procedures [10] – this is the Ministry of Public Security has called Peking University, Tsinghua University, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, East China computer institute and other units to do and will not do things, and I spent 2 hours to complete the program design and then 2 overnight the positive and negative shading curve with a flat plotter to draw out.

  • GED [11] – this was developed on a terminal that everyone else used as a character input, and I developed the entire software based solely on the ability to display a single pixel as seen in the terminal’s instructions.

  • 87 years of map graphics – line map conversion procedures LVS [12] – this is a in Jupiter7 color graphics terminal has beautiful graphics output procedures, so that the program identification, at that time the president of Fudan Mr. Central China to see the first word is to ask “false? “, do not believe that the on-screen circuit diagram is automatically extracted from the layout graphics.

  • MOL4D [3], which was introduced in 1991, was highly praised by professional units. CAI software was awarded the highest grade in the evaluation of colleges and universities nationwide, and ranked first in the group evaluation.

  • FDISK disk partition and CMOS setup simulation program in 1994 [13] [14] — these are two software supporting intermediate Computer Application Ability, which are used by Shanghai TV University, Labor Bureau and many other units for free. The number of users in Shanghai alone is at least 1 million.

  • In 1995, the dynamic Stiffness Test software of Heavy Hammer Falling Spring [15] was developed by me under DOS. Due to its good performance and good interface, it has been used by users in Shanghai Materials for many years until the Windows era, but they refused to replace it.

Some of these work is relatively simple (such as the design of the program to draw the shading curve of id card), while most of the other work is tedious or quite tedious, which requires me to constantly think and innovate. After completion, I get a sense of achievement.

However, if you want to take a step forward in the direction of success, you will also fall into numerous pits. I have made a lot of mistakes when I was engaged in teaching and explaining and compiling textbooks. Fortunately, I was reminded by students and colleagues and was able to correct them in time.

Catch the trend of technology, want to go

No life is perfect, but I do my best.

According to my personal experience, namely in the development of graphics software, the typical example is the molecular graphics software mentioned above, from MOL3D to MOL4D, the latter has been developed in many versions and functional modules. This is partly to increase the functionality of the software itself, but also to “keep up with the trend of The Times”, because otherwise the software performance is obviously backward, or even can not be used at all. I had to constantly update it to accommodate the ever-changing software and hardware environment, including higher resolution, increased internal and external memory capacity, changes in operating systems, programming languages, and so on.

But it is hard to say that I am up-to-date in many other ways. In fact, I often feel that I am behind The Times. I have a lot of software that I don’t know how to use, so I have reprinted a lot of technical blogs on CSDN, not to say that I am familiar with the content of these blogs, but just put them there as a “cheat sheet” that I can dig up and use for my own learning.

Old and new mainstream technology collision, want to see

In the Yangtze River, the waves behind push on the ones before.

The computer languages I have used include Fortran, C, C++, Basic, Pascal, and Java, but the ones I have used most are Fortran and Pascal. And there’s a reason why I don’t like to use C all the time and use Pascal. In the summer of 1989, I personally bought a PC (PC-Boy) with only 256K of ram and a floppy disk of 365M on which I had written the same program with TC-1(Turbo C-1) and TP-3 (Turbo Pascal-3). As a result, when compiling with TC-1, I even needed to pull out the floppy disk from the drive, insert, pull out, insert repeated ten times, the result still failed, while when compiling with TP-3, I only need to pull out, insert once, and then pass. This contrast made me dislike C from now on.

For me overall, the main focus is probably not on the programming language but on the algorithms that solve the problem. I still care about graphics, images, multimedia, and want to put them on the web, where they can be viewed by others. It’s easy to put graphics on the web now, but it’s not easy to put my old molecular animations on the web because someone else’s browser doesn’t support my animation format. I also want to build a browser that supports this format and let others use my browser to view my molecular animations, but I haven’t done it yet. I used to make a multimedia presentation software, which can be used to watch MPEG, DAT, AVI, WAV, MP3, MID and other formats of media files, but now can not support all. I want to update it, but I find it difficult.

Embrace the product of The Times – artificial intelligence technology, want to hear

Where I can’t go deep, I wish someone could.

Artificial intelligence is a very old topic, which was studied as early as the early 1950s when the computer was just invented. In 2006, I reprinted an article published in 1950 by Turing, a mathematical-logician and British, on CSDN [16]. This article talks about the problem of artificial intelligence when computers play chess with people. But because machines were so small at the time, the AI he imagined could only play a simple board game like Tic-Tac-TOE with humans, which could be solved with simple deterministic algorithms. By the 1960s, the question of artificial intelligence had been raised in many fields. I have a book named Computers and Thought published in 2003, which talks a lot about artificial intelligence. Besides playing games, Computers can prove mathematical theorems, answer questions, pattern recognition, and many other aspects. However, at that time, there were still many theories on paper and no actual products. It will never be taken seriously enough to compare with programs like DEEP Blue, developed by IBM in the 1990s, or AlphaGo, developed by Google today, that actually show great power.

The idea that “artificial intelligence will replace human labor” is not a new phenomenon, but something that has existed since the industrial Revolution. In fact, “all (mechanical) machines are extensions of human hands” and are therefore designed to take the place of human hands for labor, but machines without artificial intelligence only work and do not consider how they work step by step, and how they work must be prearranged by human beings. On the other hand, machines with artificial intelligence, electronic computers, do not have the cooperation of mechanical machines, and can only do mental work rather than physical work. They must work together in order to perform two kinds of labor instead of the human hand and brain. Whether the “mechanical machine of artificial intelligence will eventually replace human labor” of the problem, I think the answer should be yes, but only one or a robot to do for some work, but can’t ask it like people do a lot of a lot of work, because the computer memory, after all, can not be as large as a human brain capacity.

It is the generation of technology that facilitates life. I have great expectations for the future development of artificial intelligence. Personally, I am 84 years old and live on the fifth floor of a building with no elevator. I cannot go downstairs to buy vegetables, rice and everything I need because of brain block. I rely on my family to do these things. I look forward to one day will appear artificial intelligence robot, it can listen to my command, instead of my family up and down the stairs to buy rice, buy vegetables, buy anything I need. This robot also can take care of themselves, such as their own to charge, I did not call it to handle affairs, automatically away from me, ran to the balcony corner hide, do not interfere with our walk. Today’s robots have been able to walk, overturn it can also climb up, and can open the door out and in by themselves. I think it will not be a problem to ask it to look at the red light and cross the street. It may not be easy for it to find a stall to buy the small dishes I ask it to buy.

To the technical people living in the impetuous Internet environment, I want to say

In all fairness, there are endless opportunities ahead, so don’t lose your heart.

I used to have a variety of jobs, but like many people today, most of them were asked of me. It was for the job I was asked to do, and I had no choice. Of course, when you have time, especially after retirement, you can also learn something you are interested in, or new knowledge and skills that you are not interested in but really need. But today is the age of scientific and technological knowledge explosion, can learn a lot of things, we can not learn everything, to learn what, must be specialized, still need to accumulate bit by bit, step by step.

Today’s developers, in order to cope with the complex employment situation, I think it is not enough to rely on their own a little bit of exploration, because this is too slow, it is recommended to contact the computer as early as possible. Although we advocate “live and learn”, but the elderly in all aspects of function decline, learning efficiency is very low, especially eyesight, deafness, even a cursor can not see clearly, due to memory loss, temporary absorption is easy to forget. I think there is a lot of truth in the saying that “learning computer starts when you are a child”. Although knowledge and skills are accumulated bit by bit, you can learn much more when you are young than when you are old.

In addition, I am an earlier computer contact in general, have curiosity to many of the techniques, also innovate, like to solve various technical problems, actually also did some valuable things, but I always have time enough, things one by one, endless, do not make me to summarize what has been done, and even some according to the requirements of the project has been done, Some of the software I developed were willing to purchase or suggested me to apply for a patent. In this process, I did not accept their kindness, which may not be conducive to the transformation of science and technology into productivity, which is a great regret in the past.

Related resources:

【 1 】 my birth and experience: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/category/6122903/

【 2 】 a my works and translation: http://blog.csdn.n e t/zzwu/article/details / 91915319 /

【 2 】 I’m engaged in the teaching of the course b: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/53996517

【 3 】 MOL4D:http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/42610721 molecular graphics software

[4] I taught courses: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/53996517

[5] my hardware and software design: http://blog.csdn.ne t/zzwu/article/details / 9024697 /

[6] 5 a high-power silicon planar mask design: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/9069369

[7] VLSI tester competition items: see item 11A, 11B, 11C, 11D in [11]

[8] fast optimal channel wiring: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/8253886

【 9 】 rugged channel optimal wiring: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/8253889

[10] the first generation id card background curve drawing: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/category/6562211

[11] GED:http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/8254196 image editor

To convert circuit diagram LVS:http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/8274518 [12] territory

[13] FDISK software simulation: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/9075751

【 14 】 CMOS setup simulation: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/44885663

【 15 】 spring dynamic stiffness test: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/details/68941911

[16] Turing: machine and thinking: http://blog.csdn.net/zzwu/article/category/243030

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