While My Friends Were Playing Games, I Was Pressing BREAK
While My Friends Were Playing Games, I Was Pressing BREAK
当朋友们在玩游戏时，我却按下了“BREAK”键
How a curious kid with a ZX Spectrum became an engineer who builds AI from scratch. When I was a kid in the early ’90s, every boy in my class dreamed about the same thing: getting a game console or a ZX Spectrum to play games. And when they finally got one — that was it. Hours of Dizzy, Boulder Dash, and Elite. Pure entertainment. I was different. Not because I was smarter or more disciplined — I just couldn’t resist pressing the BREAK button. 一个拥有 ZX Spectrum 的好奇少年，是如何成长为一名从零构建 AI 的工程师的？90 年代初，我还是个孩子时，班里每个男孩的梦想都一样：拥有一台游戏机或 ZX Spectrum 来玩游戏。当他们终于如愿以偿时，便沉浸在《Dizzy》、《Boulder Dash》和《Elite》的世界里，享受纯粹的娱乐。但我与众不同，并非因为我更聪明或更有纪律，只是我无法抗拒按下“BREAK”键的冲动。
The moment everything changed: I’d load a game from a cassette tape, wait through that awful screeching sound, and then — instead of playing — I’d hit BREAK. The screen would fill with cryptic BASIC code. And I felt something I can only describe as pure awe. This is what’s inside? This is how it works? These strange words and numbers — they make the game? I was maybe 10 years old, and I was hooked. 一切改变的瞬间：我会从磁带加载游戏，忍受那刺耳的噪音，然后——我不玩游戏，而是按下 BREAK 键。屏幕上会跳出晦涩难懂的 BASIC 代码。我感受到了一种只能用“敬畏”来形容的情绪。这就是内部构造吗？这就是它的工作原理吗？这些奇怪的单词和数字——它们构成了游戏？那时我大概 10 岁，从此彻底着迷。
The book that started it all: I found a book by Radionov and Larchenko — a Soviet-era programming manual for the ZX Spectrum. It was thick, technical, and absolutely not written for children. I didn’t care. I read it cover to cover. First came BASIC. Simple loops, PRINT statements, drawing pixels on the screen. But BASIC was slow, and I wanted more. Then came assembly language. I still remember the thrill of typing my favorite line: ORG 40000. That was the starting address. From that point on, every byte was mine to control. No interpreter, no abstraction — just raw machine code talking directly to the Z80 processor. My classmates were still playing games. I was writing them.
一切的起点：我找到了一本 Radionov 和 Larchenko 编写的书——一本苏联时期的 ZX Spectrum 编程手册。它厚重、专业，绝非为儿童编写。但我不在乎，我把它从头到尾读了一遍。首先是 BASIC：简单的循环、PRINT 语句、在屏幕上绘制像素。但 BASIC 太慢了，我想要更多。接着是汇编语言。我至今仍记得输入我最爱的那行代码时的快感：ORG 40000。那是起始地址。从那一刻起，每一个字节都由我掌控。没有解释器，没有抽象层——只有直接与 Z80 处理器对话的原始机器码。我的同学们还在玩游戏，而我已经在编写游戏了。
Building things nobody asked for: I didn’t stop at simple programs. I got my hands on a Yamaha sound processor expansion board, connected it to my Spectrum, and wrote an assembly routine to digitize audio from cassette tapes. At an age when most kids were trading game cartridges, I was sampling sound and playing it back through code I wrote myself. I created custom fonts — pixel by pixel, byte by byte, designing each character in a grid and encoding it into memory. Then I wrote my own game. A small one, sure — but it had sprite animation, collision detection, and a game loop. All in Z80 assembly. All by hand. And the feeling through all of this? It wasn’t pride. It wasn’t “look how smart I am for reading hard books at a young age.” It was pure joy. The same joy I felt the first time I pressed BREAK. The joy of seeing how things work and making them do what I want. 构建没人要求的东西：我没有止步于简单的程序。我弄到了一块雅马哈声音处理器扩展板，把它连接到我的 Spectrum 上，并编写了一段汇编程序，将磁带中的音频数字化。在大多数孩子还在交换游戏卡带的年纪，我已经在通过自己编写的代码进行声音采样和回放。我创建了自定义字体——逐个像素、逐个字节地在网格中设计每个字符，并将其编码进内存。然后我写了自己的游戏。当然，它很小，但它拥有精灵动画、碰撞检测和游戏循环。全部用 Z80 汇编编写，全部由手工完成。这一切带来的感觉是什么？不是骄傲，也不是“看我年纪轻轻就能读懂深奥书籍有多聪明”。那是纯粹的快乐。就像我第一次按下 BREAK 键时感受到的快乐一样。那种洞察事物运作原理并让它们按我意愿行事的快乐。
From solder to software: That curiosity never went away — it just evolved. From the ZX Spectrum, I moved to PC hardware — soldering, modding, understanding every chip on the motherboard. I fell in love with microcontrollers and circuits. I dove deep into C++ and low-level systems programming, always chasing that same feeling: what’s inside? How does it really work? This path led me to industrial automation — and it became my career for over 20 years. 从焊接到软件：那种好奇心从未消失，只是在进化。从 ZX Spectrum 开始，我转向了 PC 硬件——焊接、改装、研究主板上的每一块芯片。我爱上了微控制器和电路。我深入钻研 C++ 和底层系统编程，始终追寻着那种感觉：里面是什么？它到底是如何工作的？这条道路将我引向了工业自动化，并成为了我 20 多年的职业生涯。
20+ years in the field — and the fire never went out: I started at the bottom. Operator at oil field pumping stations in the Russian Arctic — the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, shift work in -40°C, maintaining instruments and control systems with my own hands. Then I built an internet service provider from scratch. Got the licenses, installed base stations, deployed communication nodes at remote oil fields. I was the director, the engineer, and often the guy climbing the tower. But the big chapter was Rosneft. Twelve years. I grew from an automation engineer to acting head of the production automation group — managing 105 people across 14 oil fields in the Komi Republic and Yamal. SCADA systems, telemetry, instrumentation, fire suppression, communication networks. I personally commissioned control systems at 3 new oil fields from the ground up. I wrote software in C++, VBA, RAD Studio. I built monitoring dashboards in Wonderware InTouch. I designed databases in MySQL. When Flash was still a thing, I built interactive HMI panels in ActionScript. Whatever the problem needed — I learned it and built it. After Rosneft, I moved to SCADA auditing and expertise — reviewing automation systems, writing technical specifications, quality control for one of the largest oil companies in the world. And through all of it — every new controller, every protocol, every late night debugging a PLC — that same feeling from childhood was there. The joy of understanding how things work. It never faded. Not once. 深耕 20 余年，热情从未熄灭：我从底层做起。在俄罗斯北极地区的涅涅茨自治区担任油田泵站操作员，在零下 40 摄氏度的环境下轮班，亲手维护仪器和控制系统。后来，我从零开始建立了一家互联网服务提供商。申请执照、安装基站、在偏远油田部署通信节点。我既是主管，也是工程师，还经常是那个爬塔的人。但我职业生涯的重要篇章是在俄罗斯石油公司（Rosneft）度过的。整整十二年。我从自动化工程师成长为生产自动化组的代理负责人，管理着科米共和国和亚马尔地区 14 个油田的 105 名员工。SCADA 系统、遥测、仪表、消防、通信网络。我亲自从零开始调试了 3 个新油田的控制系统。我用 C++、VBA、RAD Studio 编写软件，用 Wonderware InTouch 构建监控仪表盘，用 MySQL 设计数据库。在 Flash 盛行时，我用 ActionScript 构建交互式 HMI 面板。无论问题需要什么，我都去学习并解决它。离开 Rosneft 后，我转向了 SCADA 审计和专家咨询工作——为全球最大的石油公司之一审查自动化系统、编写技术规范和进行质量控制。在这一切过程中——每一个新控制器、每一个协议、每一个调试 PLC 的深夜——童年的那种感觉始终存在。那种理解事物运作原理的快乐，从未消退，一次也没有。
Why I’m building Genesis 2: Today, at 46, I’m building Genesis 2 — an AI system based on a novel Cascade Mixture-of-Experts architecture that I invented and patented. A system with 10,800 experts, 100% accuracy on its domains, 18ms inference — and it runs entirely on CPU. No GPU required. It doesn’t just generate text — it executes. It runs code, manages servers, solves real engineering problems. Because that’s what I’ve always built: things that do things. People ask me: “Why build your own AI from scratch? Why not just use APIs?” Because I’m still that kid pressing BREAK. I don’t want to use the black box. I want to open it, understand every neuron, every weight, every routing decision. I want to build something that works the way I think it should work — efficient, practical, and deeply understood. The ORG 40000 of today is a neural network’s first layer. The Yamaha sound chip is now a GPU. The Z80 opcodes are now PyTorch tensors. But the feeling? The feeling is exactly the same. I love this. I loved it when I was 10, I love it at 46, and I’ll love it at 80. It’s not a job. It’s not a career move. It’s the way my brain is wired — and I wouldn’t change a thing.
我为何要构建 Genesis 2：如今 46 岁的我，正在构建 Genesis 2——一个基于我发明并申请专利的全新“级联专家混合”（Cascade Mixture-of-Experts）架构的 AI 系统。该系统拥有 10,800 个专家模型，在特定领域达到 100% 的准确率，推理速度仅为 18 毫秒，且完全在 CPU 上运行，无需 GPU。它不仅能生成文本，还能执行任务。它能运行代码、管理服务器、解决实际的工程问题。因为我一直以来构建的都是“能干活的东西”。人们问我：“为什么要从零构建自己的 AI？为什么不直接使用 API？”因为我依然是那个按下 BREAK 键的孩子。我不想使用黑盒，我想打开它，理解每一个神经元、每一个权重、每一个路由决策。我想构建一个符合我逻辑的系统——高效、实用且被深刻理解。今天的 ORG 40000 就是神经网络的第一层。雅马哈声音芯片变成了 GPU。Z80 操作码变成了 PyTorch 张量。但那种感觉呢？感觉完全一样。我热爱这一切。10 岁时我热爱它，46 岁时我依然热爱，到 80 岁时我还会热爱。这不是一份工作，也不是职业规划，这是我大脑的运作方式——我不会改变任何一点。
The point: I’m not writing this to brag. I’m writing this because I think the world needs more people who press BREAK. Not people who are afraid of complexity. Not people who need permission to learn something “too advanced.” Just curious people who look at a running system and think: I wonder what’s inside. If you’re that person — whether you’re 10 or 50 — trust that instinct. It’s the most valuable thing you have. I’m Aleksandr Larionov. 重点：我写这些不是为了炫耀。我写这些是因为我认为世界需要更多敢于按下“BREAK”键的人。不是那些害怕复杂性的人，也不是那些需要获得许可才敢学习“过于高深”知识的人。而是那些充满好奇心，看到运行中的系统会想“我想知道里面是什么”的人。如果你就是这样的人——无论你是 10 岁还是 50 岁——请相信那种直觉。那是你拥有的最宝贵的东西。我是 Aleksandr Larionov。