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Time Doesn’t Come Back

I

Today I turned twenty, which I suppose is my official farewell to adolescence. Not that anything special happened - aside from the usual routine of sending PRs and reviewing code for Clang-Tidy, I mostly just read and studied for finals. Looking back at my eighteenth birthday, it’s just as blurry, only further away - I can’t even remember what I was doing back then.

II

This year has been an exhausting one for me. I feel like I did so much, and never really got to rest:

Started interning at ISCAS at the start of the year. During the internship I went to AOSCC and entered a compiler competition on the side, writing my first C++ project in the process (how does a language get this bad). After the competition ended I had surgery, then left the software institute to work at a lab back at school. While working on my advisor’s project, I also submitted patches to LLVM and FEX on the side to improve my C++ skills, merged over 40 PRs in two months and somehow ended up as a reviewer. Last week I gave a not-too-disastrous presentation at group meeting. And on top of all that, there was still coursework and club recruiting throughout the year…

This enormous workload gradually pushed me into some pretty unhealthy habits - going to bed at three or four in the morning, then getting up at nine or ten to keep working. After a year at university, aside from going around trying different places to eat, I haven’t had much of a life outside of that. It’s been pretty barren.

Then I’d chat with friends on Twitter and Telegram, scroll through the photos they shared of their lives - free and easy - and I’d look up at the sky, confused, wondering: are we really living under the same blue sky?

III

Ten years ago was 2015. I was just a dumb elementary schooler who liked playing Minecraft. That was around when I first got into tools like Google, and the way it happened was kind of strange: the Minecraft server I wanted to play on required a legit copy, but Mojang didn’t have a payment channel for mainland China at the time, and 165 CNY was way too expensive for me back then. So I did what every elementary schooler does: went online looking for shared accounts, and somehow ended up jumping the firewall in the process. I honestly don’t even remember how I managed that…

Looking back through my emails from that time (wait, I was already using Gmail that early?), all that’s left is a pile of promotional emails from Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter and a few Zhihu answer invitations.

Then I looked through my inbox from the past two months:

IV

I used to think about how I’d eventually travel to lots of places in the world, take my time experiencing them, and if I got lucky, find somewhere that fit me and just settle there. But after starting college, that urge to explore got heavily suppressed. I don’t know why - maybe I’m just tired. College didn’t bring the happiness I imagined; instead it left me with a deep exhaustion, anxiety, and self-doubt (e.g. there was a stretch in my first year where I kept wondering if my personality and intelligence just weren’t suited for programming, and I seriously considered switching majors, because I seemed completely unable to adapt to how the school tested students’ abilities - that only eased once I started interning).

I think this is mostly a personal issue, since the people around me don’t seem nearly as tangled up about it as I am. But still, I think: everyone gets tired eventually, and when you’re tired, you should be able to go home. The thing is, I don’t know where my home is. I can’t find a place to put myself down.

V

Honestly, I don’t even know why I got into computers. Ever since I was little, I’ve had this vague sense that sooner or later I’d build something just to satisfy my own curiosity. My father works in machining, and I’ve been to his company and seen his lathes - and it made me realize that making anything non-trivial in that field is really hard, since just the equipment alone costs a fortune. Being as poor as I am, if I wanted to build anything like that, I’d basically have to take a ton of money from other people, and I hate that feeling. Computers, on the other hand, seemed perfect: a computer, a keyboard, install Emacs, and you can blast the market with the beam of your pure autism.

After AI showed up, my learning speed and productivity took off even more. I’ve turned Codex and Gemini into tools that just fire characters into the command line, and surprisingly, this setup works great. After I modified GDB so agents could use a debugger, it got even better.

Also, Gemini 3’s capabilities genuinely surprised me - it’s gradually starting to write correct code. Reinforcement learning is really cool, and I suspect we haven’t hit diminishing returns on scaling yet, so in the foreseeable future these agents are only going to get stronger.

VI

Got a new laptop this year, went from a gaming laptop to a Thinkpad E14. Since I think local LLMs are basically a scam, I didn’t bother getting a machine with a discrete GPU, and that turned out to be the right call: my laptop got 1kg lighter and battery life quadrupled (from 1.5h to 6h). Still running Arch Linux, it’s genuinely a great system (well, if you actually understand Linux), since I barely have to lift a finger to keep the latest software while the system stays stable and doesn’t blow up.

Other than that, I bought an iPad A16, originally to read papers on, but it turns out I still prefer printing things out to read. So now it’s basically just a notes device + Arknights launcher. Though I recently switched from X11 to Wayland, so the Arknights launcher is now running through Waydroid. The iPad is currently gearing up for Arknights: Endfield.

VII

Original questions here

Q01. If you had to sum up this year in one word/phrase/sentence, what would it be?

A just-right kind of exhaustion.

Q02. Did you face any major life changes this year that mattered to you?

Yes.

Q03. How was your daily rhythm - exercise, diet, sleep? Any changes or reflections?

Pretty bad. I need to fix my sleep schedule.

Q04. Any changes in financial management or savings? Any interesting expenses?

Not much change. Interesting expense… bought a Switch to play Pokémon and Persona 5.

Q05. What milestones did you hit this year in work or study that felt significant to you?

Interning, then joining a lab, started being able to support myself, at least in a basic way.

Q06. Did you develop any personal side projects or long-term interests? How’s progress?

Started maintaining my own text editor that’s pretty similar to Emacs. The first release is nowhere in sight yet…

Q07. What moments stirred up strong emotions for you?

Can’t think of any.

Q08. Did you cry this year, and why?

Don’t remember.

Q09. What new things did you try this year?

Tried a new restaurant every week.

Q10. What new places did you go to?

Went to Wuhan, though mostly just wandered around HUST and did some hiking.

Q11. Any books, films, music, or games that had an impact on you? Any characters or ideas that stuck with you?

I found a game called NOeSIS :)

Q12. Did you enter, develop, or end a relationship this year? Any new realizations?

None.

Q13. Which friends had the biggest impact on you this year? Did you make any new ones, and how?

Too many people to count. Most of my friends are better than me at things, and I get inspired by them all the time.

(Feel free to check out their blogs in the links page!)

Q14. Were you involved in building, maintaining, or engaging with any community or circle? What did it mean to you?

Involved in the development of Clang-Tidy and FEX. It doesn’t really mean anything in particular, being happy doing it is what matters most.

Q15. Looking ahead to 2026, what are your top three goals or wishes?