All In

Zhao Wenyuan sat in his office in Jingan District. Two screens stood before him: CodeSafe's backend on the left, a forum on the right, and a cup of iced-over Americano in the middle.

Ever since the "Laid-Off Programmer" blog and videos had gone viral, CodeSafe's average daily new registrations had dropped from 150 to just over 90. The trend looked ugly.

The tone of community discussions had changed too. Two weeks ago, people had still been asking, "CodeSafe vs BugKiller, which is better?" Now the top post on the homepage was titled, "A Product Made by a Laid-Off Employee Crushes a Stanford PhD."

The technical comparison had become a comparison of stories.

And in the race for a better story, Zhao Wenyuan had no chance of winning.

He recalled Wang Zhiyuan's words. "No rush. But remember, opportunity doesn't knock twice."

Three days had passed, and he still had not replied.

Access to 150,000 corporate clients and the brand endorsement of Dingsheng Cloud sounded like a direct road to the top.

But Zhao Wenyuan had seen the endings of too many such stories in Silicon Valley. A small company took on a major corporation's distribution channels; in the first year, it was a partner; in the second, a core supplier; by the third, the founder's name had vanished from the official website.

He had quit Google and returned home to start a business, not to work for another tech giant.

Zhao Wenyuan switched to CodeSafe's public beta dashboard.

Two weeks into the beta, user approval stood at 82%. Project detection accuracy led the industry benchmark, and three mid-sized companies were discussing procurement.

The data was not bad. What was lacking was a narrative.

He opened his saved public beta feedback and scrolled for five minutes. One frontend team said, "CodeSafe caught two P0 issues for us before launch." An independent developer said, "For the first time, code review doesn't feel like a pointless formality."

It was a good product.

Zhao Wenyuan closed the chat logs and opened the social media post editor.

He typed.

Then deleted it.

He typed again.

Then deleted it again.

May 11, 2:00 p.m.

Zhao Wenyuan's post appeared on the tech forum, Twitter, and Weibo. It was the same message, word for word.

"NullPointer once said in Detection Rate Is Everything, 'You only need to run a tool once to know whether it's good.'

I agree.

So I propose an open, transparent, community-supervised head-to-head evaluation: CodeSafe vs BugKiller. The same codebases, the same evaluation standards, livestreamed from start to finish, with all data made public.

Let the products speak for themselves!"

The tech community exploded immediately.

"Holy shit, Dr. Zhao wants to duel NullPointer."

"The best showdown in tech this year. Nothing else comes close."

"Independent developer vs funded team. Laid-off P7 vs Stanford PhD."

"Here it comes. This is what a real match looks like."

"His pride won't let him surrender. Respect."

Within twenty minutes, the post shot to the top of the trending list.

When Su Niannian sent him a screenshot, Han Luyi was at Bug Café eating Old Zhou's new chicken cutlet rice. He put down his chopsticks and opened it.

"Did you see it? Did you see it? Did you see it?"

"He used your own words to issue the challenge."

"He delivered himself right to your door."

Han Luyi picked his chopsticks back up, grabbed a piece of chicken cutlet, and typed with his free left hand.

"Accept."

"Just one word?"

"If he wants to compete, then we compete."

An editor from 36-Degree Technology contacted Han Luyi and volunteered to host the livestreamed head-to-head evaluation.

Han Luyi agreed, and Zhao Wenyuan agreed as well.

Someone in the comments posted, "36-Degree is going to make a killing off the traffic from hosting this."

May 12. The community voted on the test projects.

Using the NullPointer account, Han Luyi posted a suggestion:

"For fairness, the testing plan should cover codebases of different sizes. After all, users work with projects of every scale. I suggest three rounds: small projects, around 30,000 lines; medium projects, 100,000 to 200,000 lines; and large enterprise projects, over 300,000 lines. The same batch of codebases and the same evaluation criteria."

The comments beneath it were unanimous in praise.

"Support tiered testing. That's the scientific approach."

"NullPointer is thinking big."

"This proposal has already won him an advantage. You propose a fair plan, and the other side can only agree."

Zhao Wenyuan replied, "Completely agree. Covering different scales is the only way for it to be convincing."

Someone raised a crucial question below the post. "Both sides may have pretrained on public projects. What would those results prove? To be fair, they need code neither side has seen before."

Old Zhao from 36-Degree Technology stepped in to coordinate. Three corporate sponsors each donated a private project that was about to be open-sourced, projects neither side could possibly have encountered before. The code would be sealed by a third-party notary before the livestream and unsealed only when it was connected during the broadcast.

The final plan was set—

Round 1: A Go microservice framework from a startup, around 30,000 lines.

Round 2: A Python data-processing platform from a mid-sized SaaS company, around 120,000 lines.

Round 3: A Java enterprise core system from a publicly listed company, around 350,000 lines.

36-Degree Technology released an announcement that night.

"Public livestreamed head-to-head evaluation of AI code review tools, May 14 at 7:00 p.m. The three test codebases have been donated by corporate sponsors and have not previously been accessed by either side. They will be sealed by a third-party notary and unsealed during the livestream. Real-time data will be made public, with the community supervising throughout."

By May 13, the number of reservations had exceeded 30,000.

The tech forum opened a dedicated thread: "CodeSafe vs BugKiller: Who are you betting on?"

The polling results were delicate: 55% bet on BugKiller, while 45% bet on CodeSafe. The gap was not wide.

"BugKiller has a better community reputation, but CodeSafe has a full team, enterprise solutions, and a PhD endorsement."

"NullPointer is taking on fifteen people by himself? Are you serious?"

"Don't let the headcount fool you. Last time, a user said CodeSafe missed three bugs."

"One case."

"Go look at the comments. He wasn't the only one."

More than a dozen tech self-media outlets published analysis articles, predicting the results from every conceivable angle. Ma Xiaofei wanted to make a prediction video too, but a single message from Han Luyi stopped him.

"Don't post anything before the match. I just proposed a fair testing plan. If you immediately put out a prediction video, the top comment will be, 'NullPointer's team is manipulating public opinion before the match.'"

Ma Xiaofei replied, "So I just hold it in?"

Han Luyi said, "Hold it in. After the results come out, cut together the highlights. That traffic will be ten times what a prediction video gets."

Ma Xiaofei nodded.

"Good point. I'll prepare the script first."

May 14.

Su Niannian sat at her workstation at Beaver Technology, with a blank weekly operations report template open in front of her. She had been staring at it for twenty minutes.

It was her first day back from annual leave. The newly appointed director had reassigned her to operations support. Her access to product documents had been shut off, she could no longer access the data dashboards, and she was no longer invited to technical reviews. Officially, it was so she could "transition through operations for a while."

At two in the afternoon, a message popped up in the product group. The AI code review project she had previously led needed to prepare a user interview plan that week. The person who had taken over tagged the whole group and asked who had the user contact spreadsheet.

Su Niannian had it on her computer. She had spent three months doing user research, adding every single contact herself.

She typed out a line, then deleted it.

No one had tagged her.

She minimized the weekly report window and opened BugKiller's system monitoring page. The competition codebases were sealed, so she could not access them, but BugKiller's own systems had to be flawless. She remotely ran an internal benchmark test: detection engine response, concurrent processing, stability of parsers for each language—all green.

She sent Han Luyi a message. "The system is fine. I just have no idea what's in those three sealed projects. Total mystery boxes."

Han Luyi replied quickly. "We've controlled everything we can. Leave the rest to the product."

Su Niannian looked at the message, then at the blank weekly operations report template.

At five thirty, she left work on time. Her laptop was in her backpack.

May 14, 6:55 p.m.

36-Degree Technology's livestream began.

The screen was split down the middle. CodeSafe's logo was on the left, white lettering on a blue background; BugKiller's was on the right, red lettering on a black background.

The viewer count jumped from 8,000 to 12,000, then from 12,000 to 18,000. It was still climbing.

The scrolling comments were already flying by.

"Here we go."

"Don't chicken out, Doctor."

"Go, NullPointer!"

"I've been waiting since three this afternoon."

"Nobody talk. Wait for the results."

36-Degree Technology's studio was not large. Two rows of seats faced each other, three meters apart. CodeSafe was on the left, BugKiller on the right. Four cameras hung overhead, while a large screen directly ahead displayed the data in real time.

Zhao Wenyuan sat in the left row, wearing a white shirt pressed without a single crease. Only the top button at his collar was undone. He nodded toward the camera.

Five meters away, Han Luyi took his seat on the right. He wore a white hoodie with "Debug the World" printed across the chest. He closed every unnecessary window, leaving only a terminal and BugKiller's admin dashboard on his screen.

He opened Sight.

Han Luyi looked again, and more information unfolded—

The calm was real, and so was the tension. This man had come with an all-or-nothing mindset.

Han Luyi withdrew his gaze.

Five minutes before the opening, Zhao Wenyuan stood, walked over, and held out his hand.

"NullPointer, I've heard a lot about you."

Han Luyi stood and shook it. "Dr. Zhao, you've made a good product."

Han Luyi was not merely being polite. Zhao Wenyuan's direction was not wrong; he had simply chosen the wrong time to fight a battle he should never have fought.

Zhao Wenyuan smiled. "Likewise."

After shaking hands, they returned to their respective seats. The cameras caught the moment, and the comments erupted again.

The viewer count exceeded 20,000.

The host stepped in front of the large screen.

"Good evening, everyone. Welcome to 36-Degree Technology's 'Public Head-to-Head Evaluation of AI Code Review Tools' livestream."

"The rules were announced earlier. Tonight, CodeSafe and BugKiller will conduct three rounds of testing under identical conditions, using identical codebases. All data will be displayed in real time, under the community's supervision."

"The first test project is a Go microservice framework, with approximately 30,000 lines of code."

"Now—"

"Begin!"