Alright, let me tell you about my run-in with this thing called ‘Xiyu Wang’. It wasn’t a person, not really, more like a system or a standard we had to deal with on a project a while back.
It started when I got assigned this new module. The requirement spec kept mentioning compliance with the Xiyu Wang protocol. First time I saw it, I thought, okay, probably some internal library or guideline. Easy enough, right? Wrong.
So, I started asking around. My team lead just kinda pointed me towards the general direction of our old documentation server. Said something like, “It’s in there somewhere, good luck.” Not exactly reassuring.
Digging Through the Mess
I spent the next couple of days basically archaeology. Searching through ancient folders, dusty wikis, code comments from people who probably left the company years ago. It was a real mess.
- Found snippets of code claiming ‘XW compatibility’.
- Found contradictory notes on different pages.
- Found meeting minutes where ‘Xiyu Wang’ was mentioned but never actually defined.
It felt like everyone knew of it, but nobody knew what it actually was. Like some kind of company folklore.
Trying to Make Sense of It
Eventually, deep in some archive folder, I found a document. Looked like the original spec. Problem was, it was super vague in some parts and ridiculously specific in others. And written in a way that made almost no practical sense for what we were doing now.
My job was basically reverse-engineering this thing based on the doc and the few code examples I could find that seemed to work. It was a lot of trial and error.
Seriously frustrating process:
I’d write some code based on my best guess.
Then I’d try to integrate it.
It would fail some obscure check I didn’t even know existed.
Then back to the drawing board, tweak things, try again. This went on for days.
The Outcome
In the end, I managed to get something working. It passed the tests, integrated with the other parts that supposedly followed the same ‘standard’. But honestly? I’m still not 100% sure I implemented the ‘Xiyu Wang protocol’ correctly as intended.
It just felt like one of those things that grew over time, badly managed, poorly documented, and just made life harder for everyone down the line. We wasted so much time just trying to figure out what it was supposed to be, instead of building the actual feature. Classic example of how not to handle internal standards, if you ask me.
So yeah, that was my practical experience with ‘Xiyu Wang’. A whole lot of digging and guessing.
