He Wore Women's Clothes, Dropped out of School, and Quit Google. He Lived a Life That Others Dared Not Imagine.

There are always some mavericks who practice things that most people are unwilling to try. The guest interviewed today is Xiaodao, a well-known genius programmer in the circle. He has a unique personality and personal experience, but as a geek who loves code, he has been accepting challenging things and gradually walked out of a unique and beautiful landscape.

Kojima's real name is Tang Feihu, his online name is Kojima Minako, and his nicknames in the circle are "Kojima", "Island Girl", and "Island God".

Born in 1991, he was recommended to study at Harbin Institute of Technology. He won the gold medal of the Asian ACM competition and the champion of the Microsoft Beauty of Programming Competition. He dropped out of Harbin Institute of Technology because he did not like the atmosphere of the university. After that, he worked for Huanle Mutual Entertainment, Ji Suan Ke and Google. During his time at Google, he used his spare time to create the popular blockchain game "Ethereum Water Margin". Now, he is the CEO of Andromeda Technology and the co-founder of Shenyan Technology.

Note: Andromeda Technology focuses on the development and popularization of blockchain Dapps, and its core product is the decentralized content community Matataki.io, while Shenyan Technology focuses more on the development of game engines and has developed the game production tool DgameMaker. The two companies have cooperated in many fields.

He is also obsessed with writing code. He cares about open source and domestic programming competitions, actively participates in discussions, and is eager to answer other people's questions. He is a well-known community leader. Because of his distinctive personal style, there are many interesting things in the circle.

There are too many halos and labels on him, and it is difficult to describe him in one or two sentences. We try our best to introduce this serious and interesting soul objectively in one article.

The island girl is so cute, she must be a boy

In addition to his outstanding programming skills, Kojima is also well-known in the industry for his distinctive personality.He is one of the earliest cross-dressing programmers in China.

With long flowing hair, a love for the second dimension, and a love for beautiful outfits, this is the true portrayal of Kojima. Even when attending technical events as a guest, Kojima would post a photo of himself wearing delicate women's clothing.

Regarding the appearance that always sparks discussion, Kojima said that they are not that important and he will not deliberately emphasize his clothing preferences.Advocate openness, diversity and self-expression,He believes this is consistent with the values embodied by open source.

In today's world where the image of a programmer is stereotyped, Kojima's experience and personality stand out from the crowd.

Coding skills are the calling card of engineers

Kojima first became famous in the circle because of the rewards and recognition he received from participating in many competitions. Looking back on his initial connection with competitions, Kojima said, "I had ADHD in middle school. The cultural courses in school were not very attractive, but I participated in many competitions.Only challenging things can make you fully devote yourself to them." 

It seems that from the very beginning, his passion for challenges has permeated his programming career for many years.

His outstanding talent and hard work have also won him many awards, including 2014 ACM/ICPC Mudanjiang gold medal, Beijing gold medal, 2015 Microsoft Beauty of Programming champion,It was shortlisted for the Baidu Star finals for three consecutive years in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

He believes that the competition has helped him improve:First, there is basically no syllabus, and students will receive sufficient training and feedback in daily training.He can see his continuous improvement, which is in line with his character of not liking to be constrained.

Another one isThese large-scale competitions always maintain good fairness and competitiveness.So until now, he is still active on the judging panel and in discussion forums of various competitions, actively answering everyone's questions.

The LaTeX templates and code libraries he created when he participated in the ACM competition are still being learned and referenced by many students today.

In addition, the several Dapp (decentralized application) example programs he created have been widely cited and are introductory tutorials that many people talk about. Some students have also started to write and design Dapps for Ethereum and EOS (blockchain).

And Kojima is now embarking on another challenge:Research, development and promotion of blockchain technology.When it comes to blockchain, Kojima believes that there is also a close connection between it and open source.

Just a few days ago, Xiaodao and Hal, the founder of clockworkpi, had a discussion for several hours. Hal believes that the intersection between open source and blockchain is still relatively small. Xiaodao gave another point of view.He believes that this is all ultimately a purpose and that we are at a critical point in change.

Kojima believes that people are still in the process of exploring the relationship between open source and blockchain technology.  「Connecting the Rabbit Dots」stage (as Gitcoin founder Owocki recently said at Devcon, it is called "blind men and the elephant").

And these explorations will eventually connect Richard Stallman's Free Software Movement to Linux, then to the Cathedral and the Bazaar, and finally to Bitcoin, he believes. "Bitcoin is the first time humans have organized at scale without hierarchy."(Bitcoin is the first time in human history that large-scale, classless connections have been achieved).

As for the future, Kojima believes that it will move towards new collaboration and business forms such as One Repo One Token, or even One Person One Token, where everyone can be an independent company. 

Dropping out of school, leaving Google, and starting a business, there is nothing he can't let go of

On the road to growth, Xiaodao also encountered confusion and low points like us.

But he can always find himself in the noise and follow his inner choices, includingHe dropped out of college and later quit Google to start his own business.

Because he was not able to adapt to the university study and life, Xiaodao chose to take a leave of absence after only three months in Harbin Institute of Technology.

Later, Kojima mentioned the reason for dropping out of school on other occasions: I felt that there was a bigger world calling me rather than sitting in the classroom and listening to what I had learned in junior high school.

After that, he went on study tours, started a business with classmates, etc. We also learned from his own Twitter that that period was also the low point in his life.

Although he experienced many doubts, he never gave up, that is, he kept learning and studying technology, and participated in various computer competitions. Recalling this time, Kojima admitted that although he regretted not completing his studies, he did not regret it.Because I did not waste my time, I did more things that I wanted to do, and I was getting closer to my original dream.

At the same time, Google opened its doors to the island of talent.

Through the recommendation of a friend, Xiaodao got the opportunity to interview at Google. With his solid algorithm skills, he got an offer from Google headquarters and had the opportunity to engage in blockchain-related research. However, due to visa issues, he missed out on his dream of Silicon Valley.

In order to follow his inner voice, he finally left Google in 2018 and founded his own company, Andoromeda.Continue to focus on the development of the blockchain industry.

Regarding this role change, Kojima recalled that there was nothing special about the change in mentality from engineer to CEO, the main thing was that he looked at things from a more comprehensive perspective.

“Because the blockchain industry is a very complex and dynamic field, new things emerge every day. One day in the cryptocurrency world is like one year in the real world. This is actually a true reflection of this industry.”

Regarding his current company responsibilities, Kojima said,Filtering out the noise from the information and selecting the truly valuable things is a very important daily task.Thanks to the gathering of some excellent partners around me, my knowledge and horizons have been broadened unprecedentedly in the past year."

Under the powerful appeal of the island, Andromeda Technology has gathered many industry experts. With their persistence and love for technology, they have begun to delve deeply into application development in the field of blockchain technology.

Kojima's focus gradually shifted from code to the company's strategic development. Under his leadership, this young startup and company began to show strong vitality and gradually produced many high-quality games and products.

The young Xiaodao has gradually become a young leader in China's blockchain technology.

After switching to a management position, he felt frustrated that he had less and less time to write code. But he would still try to find time to write code, saying that he "always has to find something with a higher ROI (return on investment) to do."

The island is now facing new challenges.

The movie Legends of the Fall begins with a monologue:Some people are able to listen to their inner voice and live by it., some of them became lunatics, others became legends.

Kojima is just one of them. There are many people like him who, relying on their unremitting efforts, unique insights, and love for the world, use codes and actions to write a different life and show their unique geek open source spirit.

China Open Source Annual Conference, let's cheer for Xiaodao

Whether it is his obsession with code, his persistence in competition, his image in women's clothing, or his dropping out of school, leaving Google, and devoting himself to blockchain entrepreneurship, Xiaodao has a strong belief that allows him to keep moving forward in and out of the world of code and create his own landscape.

At the 2019 China Open Source Annual Conference to be held this weekend, Xiaodao will also give a wonderful presentation. He will November 3, 14:20-15:00, conduct a "How to solve Open Source Sustainability with Decentralized Autonomous Organization?"(How to solve the open source sustainability problem through distributed autonomous organizations (DAO)?) Want to get close to the island? Come and join us!

This weekend, the Open Source Annual Conference will be held in Shanghai. This two-day conference has invited more than 100 guests, including Vice President, GitHub Thomas Dohmke, Vice President of Community Development, Apache Software Foundation Sharan Foga,General Manager of Microsoft China Cloud Computing and AI DivisionMak Chiu Chun, Founder & Chairman of CSDNJiang Tao and other important industry experts gave nearly a hundred in-depth content sharing sessions.

As the fifth annual China Open Source Conference, it includes more than ten parallel sessions, covering the following topics:Open source software, open source hardware, community operation and governance, open source educationThe conference also invited friends from various free/open source related companies and academia to attend this feast.

What are you waiting for? Come and join us!

Get a free two-day ticket for the Super Neuro collaboration:

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