Ming Ge, person in charge of the official website of Huawei Cloud: How did we stay on the frontlines and challenge the industry leaders in 8 months?

This article is shared from the HUAWEI CLOUD community, " HUAWEI CLOUD official website person in charge Ming Ge: How do we keep our appearance and challenge the industry leader in 8 months? ", the original author: HUAWEI CLOUD community selection.

On a Friday evening in April, Ming Ge, who had just finished an audio conference, picked up the coffee on the table and took a sip. At the same time, I flipped through the notebook lying on the right hand side, thinking about some of the questions that he was about to throw.

He has been working at Huawei for the 15th year. He is currently the technical person in charge of the R&D team on the official website of Huawei Cloud. He is overseeing the external "front" of Huawei Cloud.

As a technical manager, Ming has a small habit, "Leave some quiet time for myself every day. During this time, try not to deal with emails and work information, and be able to do some code development, review, and technical research."

He is also accustomed to arranging transactional work in the first half of the week, and in the second half of the week, he can have relatively complete time to systematically discuss larger technical solutions with the team's architects and designers.

When studying technology, Ming likes to go down to see its underlying operating mechanism and its source code. He is also a proponent of the "ten thousand hours law", and he always firmly believes that by accumulating enough time and energy, he will definitely be able to make a difference in technology and comprehend by analogy.

Therefore, he and the team can complete an almost impossible challenge in just over half a year.

No matter how difficult it is, the official website "front" can't fall

On the second floor of the open-air long ladder of Huawei's Nanjing Research Institute, a poster board has been erected: The Il-2 plane, which was beaten like a sieve and full of bullet holes in World War II, continued to fly and finally returned safely.

his arms around his chest, staring at the poster closely, but his thoughts stopped on the task he received ten minutes ago: 160a4be823f6c3 His team needs a limited time. Complete all self-research and reconstruction of the official website content production platform, and reach the industry-leading level.

This is a challenge to get out of the technical comfort zone, abandon the technical architecture they are very familiar with, and start from the beginning. It is like there is a highway to the end, but you can't walk, you have to build a new one yourself.

During this period, the HUAWEI CLOUD official website team must not only ensure the normal operation of daily business, solve various business needs step by step, but also allocate enough staff to build a new content platform, with tight time, few staff, and heavy tasks.

After continuous technical discussions, code rewriting, and verification tests, the smallest usable version of the project completed the showcase. At that time, everyone felt a sense of accomplishment and felt that it was finally able to slow down. However, a more urgent task was thrown on them again: in order to quickly ripen the product, the self-developed system will be used directly during the next big promotion.

At this time, there are still two months before the big promotion. In addition to dividing a part of the force to produce the page (in order to ensure the user experience, the page needs to be newly designed), it also needs to add high-concurrency, high-availability, safe and reliable productization. The necessary ability. Normally, it usually takes at least 3 to 6 months for this ability to be polished and perfected.

Ming Ge and the team had only one last battle. During that time, the task board was filled with the details of the work that was split, and the new plan continued to cover the old version. The technical experts sitting in the meeting room walked by and came again. A wave... Everyone refused to compromise, and rushed forward.

For example, in order to ensure that the produced pages cannot be lost under any circumstances, the design team read a large amount of information, discussed and prototyped many times with security, usability, and performance experts, and then chose the most'redundant' solution, and finally succeeded. Responding to many emergencies, withstood the test of the big promotion.

It took 8 months from the start of the project to the birth of the first self-researched content production page. The official website team handed in a beautiful transcript.

"The challenge was great, but we succeeded."

At the same time, they also "incidentally" developed a PQP page quality platform , including the page 404, sensitive words, spelling of Chinese and English words, and whether the design elements of the icon are consistent. Specifications and so on.

Since taking over the official website of Huawei Cloud, quality is the sword of Damocles hanging over Ming. In his words, "Quality is something that people don't think it is important when there is no problem. Whenever a problem occurs, it will become the target of public criticism. The so-called good warrior will have no merit."

How to ensure stable page quality is often overlooked by many front-end technicians. “We went to a consulting company and the partners asked about it. Everyone didn’t have such a tool. They depended more on process guarantees, such as notifying oncall when problems were discovered, and then finding the person in charge one by one. Although the management methods can continue to operate, they are more efficient. too low."

Therefore, transforming this "people's shoulders" problem handling method into tool capabilities, making a platform to empower, and then running through the entire page publishing process, is a matter of accomplishment and challenge coexisting.

Currently, the PQP platform has been “open sourced” within Huawei, and more than 80 websites, including Huawei’s official website, have been accessed to take care of the content quality of the website.

When it comes to quality, it is not only the quality of the page content, but also the quality of the stability of the official website. Just imagine, every time 12306 crashes, how many users spit out.

In order to maintain the stability of the official website of HUAWEI CLOUD, they have also made multi-layer guarantees for high availability, such as multi-copy disaster recovery backup, data livelihood, etc., in 6 computer rooms in 4 regions of the world, the official website of HUAWEI CLOUD has been installed. Servers, and purchased 4 different CDN vendors to avoid any subjective and objective risks that may arise. Build multiple escape channels, and quickly switch traffic with one key. Just like peeling an onion, the inside of the peeling layer is still intact.

"Huawei Cloud's official website is our facade, consoles and background services may be able to hang, but the official website is like the banner of Shangganling. Even if it is a polished commander, I can't fall down. It must be erected there."

The cloud is natively hidden in the business

The facade cannot be reversed. For this goal, the architecture and production release process of Huawei Cloud's official website are also constantly being optimized.

Taking the front-end framework as an example, React is powerful and flexible, Angular has a wealth of components, Vue is simple and easy to build, and the selection is quite sloppy and fascinating.

Ming Ge was also caught in the entanglement of which technology framework to choose. After some discussions, the team chose a compromise method-they and the web competence center set a principle: the basic competence team maintains a set of mainstream technology frameworks and component libraries , Each business team has its own right to use it, it can be used directly, or can choose other technology stacks as needed, but the is to comply with a unified design specification, so that even the pages produced by different technology stacks can make users feel no difference. . is a good horse with a good saddle, allowing developers to find the best matching framework based on the business characteristics of their respective caregivers.

But then the question arises, how to put these new and old technology stacks and pages produced by different technology frameworks together and present them to users?

HUAWEI CLOUD introduced the micro front-end framework, so that each small team and different technology stacks can . The purpose of the micro front end is low coupling, which minimizes the impact between modules, and each module can use different technology stacks as needed, thereby reducing the cost of technology stack switching, ensuring smooth product transition, and avoiding quality caused by one size fits all risk.

At the same time, all services are deployed in containers, and everything is code. Such as applications, middleware, and the underlying operating system are all packaged into standard packages. No matter what environment or when they are deployed, the modules are the same, and there will be no R&D environment caused by inconsistencies in the system, middleware version, or configuration. The state of the production environment is different. This is also the basis for continuous delivery and rapid iteration.

From the low-efficiency development of people pulling shoulders to the current standard page publishing process, the architecture of HUAWEI CLOUD's official website has also entered a new stage: adopts a micro-service architecture in the backend, a micro-front-end architecture in the front-end, and the page launches comply with the standard DevOps The process is simplified, and the characteristics of the technology are fully utilized to break the bottleneck of the actual business.

For example, in previous website development, no matter whether it was page functions or page content changes, developers did not bypass the developer. Any subtle change on the web page had to modify the html code or CSS script. In this case, just modify a word at random, and the development needs will be sorted out, and half a month has passed.

In order to let everyone get "liberation", there is a page production platform that allows business personnel to complete page modification by themselves; with visual construction, drag and drop components to complete WYSIWYG web page production; with system content The quality inspection platform can ensure the safe launch of the page. Through IT, all online actions are efficiently and controllable, opening up the last link of DevOps for official website content.

This is also Ming Ge's understanding of cloud native, " cloud native is not a set of architecture itself, it is more like a definition, a set of methodology . Open it, cloud native is nothing more than these key elements: microservices, DevOps, continuous delivery, containerization."

Currently, in terms of DevOps, HUAWEI CLOUD has a unified release pipeline platform through which all services are released to the production environment; in terms of continuous delivery, about 65% of the features on the official website of HUAWEI CLOUD are independently released by feature, weekly There are hundreds of features released to the production environment.

Let the bullet fly for a while

Conway's Law mentioned that the structure of the organization determines the overall technical structure. Because the front-end and back-end organizations of HUAWEI CLOUD are relatively separated, and both parties perform their own duties, some small frictions will inevitably occur in technical communication. However, when the front-end technology wave is coming, it is also trying to use technology to bridge various communication problems caused by man-made reasons.

Take Node.js as an example. In layman's terms, it is JavaScript running on the server side, allowing front-end personnel who understand JS to write simple back-end services and complete some interface assembly. "Through Node.js, if a programmer aims at a simple requirement, from front-end to back-end is realized by himself, the efficiency can be increased by 30% due to the elimination of communication costs and the action of synchronous version release."

Ming Ge said that this is what we often call "big front-end" and "full-stack developer". The full-stack capability is to eliminate the loss caused by the cooperation of some organizational teams and reduce the loss, which can naturally bring a qualitative improvement to the development efficiency and model.

Speaking of the improvement of development efficiency, nowadays the popular Serverless is setting off a revolution in the field of cloud computing. This storm has also spread to the front end. For this, Ming Ge is much more cautious.

Serverless outlines a world where there is no need to build an environment, deploy middleware, have no specific usage scenarios, business types, and only need to deploy code. This is a "utopia" of technical personnel, but Ming Ge believes that the current serverless technology has certain limitations. It is impossible for the development team to use only one technology or component, and many technologies or frameworks require analysis and tuning at the middleware and operating system level. Serverless currently does not achieve this flexibility and adaptability.

The Huawei Cloud official website team has also tried to use Serverless to improve development efficiency. For example, some services that are not sensitive to background execution and have low availability requirements are deployed, and then triggered by a timer, they can also achieve certain results. But as long as the whole scenario is involved, especially the multi-component solution, the serverless service will not be considered as the first choice.

"Maybe I am more cautious. has advanced or new technology. I used to observe for a while, let the bullet fly a while, and then keep up with the technology after mature and stable. It is not too late."

Ming Ge has also gone through many detours in choosing the technology stack. He believes that the front-end team must choose the technology stack in accordance with actual business needs, and then observe whether the ecology of the technology stack is continuously evolving. It is far from advisable. If there is no suitable one, it is better to study on your own than to compromise.

Break through the technical label, the field of view determines the height

Looking back at the iteration of front-end technology, it can be said that it is changing rapidly. New frameworks and component libraries are emerging in endlessly, and new programming languages are coming in waves...

Ming, who has been involved in different technology stacks, has been thinking about what is the purpose of technology? In the process of building the official website of Huawei Cloud, he seemed to have found the answer.

The back-end technology stack headed by JAVA has stabilized both in technical languages and frameworks in decades of iterations. In contrast, the front end is still running towards the peak of the technology maturity curve. In the future, will gradually transition from a hundred flowers to one or two mature and stable frameworks to unify the country, step by step to complement the entire ecological stage.

At present, some mainstream frameworks are essentially the same. Choose a field or technology stack to cultivate deeply, and the more you dig down, the more you will find the consistency rules.

sand, Ming Ge believes that the three technical directions that have more potential and explore space are 160a4be823fa64 immersive, intelligent and low-code.

The first is the immersive effect. The WYSIWYG front-end is pursuing a richer display and interactive form. For example, in the field of industrial manufacturing simulation, various tests and verifications can be performed on the twin digital model. Similarly, in the front-end field, products can also be visualized on the website, allowing users to intuitively perceive the operation mode of the solution.

Having said that, he gestured in the air, "You imagine that will move some networking solutions that are invisible and intangible in the background to the foreground. The process and data flow in the plan can be seen. It is amazing . But it also tests the combination of back-end data and front-end rendering capabilities, but we are working hard."

The second is intelligence, On the one hand, the Huawei Cloud official website team will further optimize intelligent algorithms and strategies in search and recommendation to achieve accurate and intelligent recommendations for thousands of people, and increase the registration conversion rate of users; on the other hand, the team Will make more explorations in the intelligent production of content, including articles, pictures, advertisements, etc., to assist operators and business personnel to produce higher-quality content.

The third direction is low-code. Now most business people can produce simple pages on their own. Developers can only intervene when some complex pages are involved. In the future, whether it is for operators or end users, will be implemented in a low-code or non-coded way.

The ultimate goal of the emergence of new front-end technologies is to be able to respond to the business and quickly solve the needs of production and operation. This is also the direction that all technologies are exploring.

At this stage, the scope of the big front end is also expanding, and Ming is more accustomed to looking at the web pages presented in front of him from the perspective of an architect, and observing a series of logic behind them. "As long as it involves user-perceivable content, the big front-end should pay attention to it. For front-end personnel, the front-end is not only a technology, it is more like a purpose."

In the beginning, the concept of front-end was relatively vague in the industry. Front-end personnel laughed at themselves as "cutting pictures", and there was no three popular frameworks. Chaos was just beginning, and everyone was crossing the river by feeling the stones.

. Today's front-end personnel, 160a4be823fb1a technology is the foundation, and the thinking and vision above it determines the height of the technology.

"For example, people often fight for the best programming language on forums. In fact, being limited by the advantages and disadvantages of a technology is to label themselves. Just like some front-end personnel will entangle the technical route and think that writing a page is not When it comes to development space, this is to trap oneself in the label of'front end'."

"If your positioning is a simple development, one skill is enough. But if you want to grow, you have to learn to jump out of that circle and change your mind. For example, with the goal of improving user experience, the technology you can learn is more than just a certain framework. Or language. In this process, we will upgrade our technical capabilities and positioning from developers to architects and even CTO standards."

There is a church in the heart, the moon and sixpence, all can have.

Benefit time is up:

Welcome everyone to the original text ( https://bbs.huaweicloud.com/blogs/266278 ), leave a message and interact, and win the front-end technology gift package we carefully prepared.

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