A Soviet Proverb!

The next morning, Wang Jun woke up desperate to pee.

He hurried to the bathroom, and when he came back to his bed, he suddenly noticed something was off.

Qi Hao seemed to have gotten up. His bed was empty, and his blanket had been folded neatly and placed at the foot of it.

"Holy shit, where's Brother Hao?"

His other two roommates were still asleep, so Wang Jun climbed back into bed and sent Qi Hao a message on QQ.

At that very moment, Qi Hao was standing in front of the sixth row of shelves in the self-service library that was open twenty-four hours a day.

The shelves held C#: From Beginner to Master, Python Basics, Advanced C# Programming, Core Python Programming... Each title on the covers sounded more intimidating than the last, and each book was thicker and more daunting than the one before it.

Qi Hao pulled out two books: Advanced C# Programming and Core Python Programming.

The Mind-Clearing and Brain-Strengthening Pill was still in effect. One of those things lasted twenty-four hours; he had taken it at three yesterday afternoon, so it wouldn't wear off until three this afternoon.

Qi Hao opened Advanced C# Programming and began flipping through it from the first chapter.

The beginning was all about the .NET framework.

Some time ago, when he was writing that paper, he had looked into basic concepts like loops and recursion to fill in the details of great master Konrod's proof.

Besides, programming languages were, at their core, just formal languages.

To him, formal languages were essentially no different from mathematical notation. They simply translated abstract logical structures into something machines could understand.

Concepts like classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, and interfaces might as well have been a heavenly scripture to many first-year students, but in Qi Hao's eyes, they were no different in essence from groups, rings, fields, modules, homomorphisms, and isomorphisms.

Groups had identity elements; classes had constructors.

Group homomorphisms preserved operations; interfaces required methods to be implemented.

Subgroups were embedded in parent groups; subclasses inherited from parent classes.

Qi Hao figured those computer science people must have secretly worn their copies of Abstract Algebra to shreds.

After finishing Advanced C# Programming, Qi Hao opened Core Python Programming.

There was a long-standing tradition among programmers: bragging that their own language was number one in the universe.

People who learned C looked down on those who learned C++, saying they made simple things complicated. People who learned C++ looked down on those who learned Java, saying its performance was lousy and it hogged memory.

People who learned C# looked down on those who learned PHP, saying the claim that PHP was the best language in the world was laughable. People who learned PHP looked down on those who learned Python, saying it was as slow as a snail. People who learned Python looked down on those who learned VB, saying it was already the twenty-first century and they were still using something from the last one.

But as Qi Hao read on, he gradually developed an intuitive sense of it.

Truly badass programmers didn't get caught up in elementary-school arguments about whose language was the best.

A badass programmer generally had several knives in hand.

For enterprise applications that needed deep integration with the Windows ecosystem, C# was the choice. For quickly testing an algorithm, analyzing data, writing a web scraper, or running a machine-learning model, Python was the handiest tool. For writing a website's frontend, there was no getting around JavaScript...

Languages were tools, and tools were meant to solve problems.

When catching mice, nobody argued about whether a black cat or a white cat was better.

Qi Hao had now gotten a handle on C#'s and Python's respective temperaments.

C#, that fellow, looked an awful lot like Java, like Microsoft's own beloved child, created to go head-to-head with Java.

A single line of code practically demanded an account of eighteen generations of your ancestors: what type a variable was, what a function returned, what a class inherited from, whether a method was public or private. Not one detail could be left vague.

In traditional C++, programmers had to allocate and free memory manually. Miss a single line of deallocation code and a server could freeze up. Modern C++ greatly reduced that nightmare with smart pointers, while in C#, you only had to create an object with new, and garbage collection, or GC, would automatically clean up after you.

Python was completely different.

Python was like a Silicon Valley engineer who came to work in shorts and slippers. It was ridiculously concise: it would never use two lines for a job one could do. Semicolons? What were those things even for?

Qi Hao didn't think it was hard to master. He quickly finished the books in his hands and glanced at the time. He was about to get up and put them back, but the moment he moved, a wave of pins and needles surged up from the soles of his feet with the force of toppling mountains and overturning seas!

It felt as though a swarm of ants were dancing wildly inside the blood vessels in his legs!

His right leg had gone completely numb and was limp as a noodle. The slightest effort to put weight on it threatened to send him to his knees.

The agonizing sensation nearly made Qi Hao lose control of his expression, but today his face seemed frozen, and he couldn't make any exaggerated expressions at all.

How strange. Could this be another effect of the pill?

A full five minutes passed before the numbness faded enough for Qi Hao to stand up.

It was getting late, so Qi Hao didn't plan to go to the cafeteria for breakfast. He headed straight to classroom 303.

When he walked in, he saw that Professor Wang, Professor Zhou, Wu Xue, Zhao Ping, and Zheng Qiang had already arrived.

Professor Wang beckoned him to sit down, then got straight to the point. "For this Imagine Cup, we're tentatively focusing on drones."

"Over the past few days, I met with CEO Wang from Dafei. He told me they'd successfully completed flight tests on the plateau. I think drones have a wide range of potential applications: agriculture, surveying and mapping, disaster relief, logistics... The Imagine Cup requires an idea that can help the world, and I think we can create something valuable in this field."

"What does everyone think?"

Wu Xue said nothing and kept her head down, taking notes. Zhao Ping looked at Zheng Qiang, then at Qi Hao.

Seeing that Professor Wang was the one speaking and that Professor Zhou had yet to say a word, Zheng Qiang assumed the idea was entirely Professor Wang's.

Professor Wang came from the mathematics department, not their Experimental College for Exceptional Talents. As Zheng Qiang understood it, people from their college were supposed to take the lead on this, which meant there was still room for discussion.

He spoke up. "Teacher Wang, I have a different opinion."

"Drone technology still isn't mature. Flight-control algorithms are a huge pitfall: attitude estimation, PID tuning-nobody in our group has specialized in any of that. As for the propulsion system, brushless motors and lithium batteries only give you a flight time of ten-odd minutes, and any interference with the 2.4G communications link can send the drone crashing."

"Not to mention that the domestic civilian drone market hasn't taken off yet, so there's not much to use as a reference."

"We only have six months for the competition. If we start from scratch, grind through flight-control source code, tune PCBs, and build a frame, we'll most likely end up with a flying toy. I think we'd be better off pursuing something more reliable, like a Windows Mobile-based mobile office suite. Our group's existing tech stack would let us get started right away."

"I think Microsoft would probably favor that kind of project too, and our chances of winning would be greater."

His argument was well reasoned and backed by evidence, but Professor Wang's expression had already grown subtly different.

Qi Hao felt uncomfortable hearing this, and spoke up. "There's a Soviet proverb: he who fears wolves should not enter the forest."

"Senior Zheng, are you afraid, then?"