From Student Club to Ant Financial: Building dumi and Shaping Modern Frontend Tools

Introduction

Editor’s note: The “人物志” series records growth stories of Ant Group’s terminal technology people, sharing valuable experiences and insights.

Background

The protagonist, originally from Alipay Experience Technology Department’s mid‑backend architecture team, now focuses on asset development tools (community version dumi) and front‑end framework Umi.

Early Years and Student Club

In 2011, after a disappointing college entrance exam, he chose a water‑resources university in Hangzhou, fearing a weak computer foundation. Fortunately, the school had a unique computer club, “Dongxu Studio”, which operated like a professional tech team with design and web groups, intensive weekly sessions, skill assessments, and a senior‑to‑junior mentorship model.

Design group (web graphics) and web group (backend) learning different skills aligned with job market.

Mandatory study until 22:00 on weekdays, full‑day Saturdays, and intensive summer training.

Regular skill evaluations and elimination of the lowest performers.

Ability to skip lectures overlapping with club content, attending only exams.

Peer‑led teaching without formal instructors.

Members wrote over 1500 hours of code annually, approaching half of the “10,000‑hour rule”.

Early Projects and Tech Exploration

During sophomore year, he co‑founded a startup as the sole front‑end developer, experimenting with various front‑end solutions:

Early adoption of AngularJS for commercial projects.

Hybrid app delivery using Ionic 0.x.

Transition from AngularJS to Vue.js (0.x) due to complexity of Angular 2 and dislike of React JSX.

Progressive build‑tool evolution: from Baidu FIS to Grunt, Gulp, Webpack, and a self‑built CLI.

These experiences kept his front‑end technical sensitivity high despite the team eventually disbanding.

Career at Ant Financial

After a stint at a mobile phone company’s Hangzhou R&D center, he joined Alipay Experience Technology Department in January 2019, becoming a member of the front‑end architecture and visualization group responsible for Umi, AntV, and related ecosystems.

Challenges and Growth in the Base‑Technology Team

Facing intense technical depth among peers, he focused on building the internal component development tool “father‑doc”, later renamed “dumi”. He identified key problems, studied competitors, defined core value, consulted senior engineers, and engaged early users.

Within one month, the first alpha of father‑doc was released, integrating many UI component libraries such as Ant Design Charts and Ant Design Mobile.

In December 2019, he joined the Front‑end Architecture & Visualization group, and in March 2020 father‑doc was rebranded to dumi and shipped with Umi 3 as the first official release.

dumi introduced the principle “developers should write demos like users”, gaining wide user approval.

Beyond Component Tools – Building an Asset Ecosystem

He collaborated with teams handling front‑end frameworks, UI component libraries, and low‑code platforms to define asset metadata standards, dual‑code assets, and an asset marketplace VSCode extension, gradually forming a connected asset “network”.

The “design engineering” initiative further integrated UI asset center, development platforms, design tools, and multi‑platform frameworks, shaping a comprehensive asset ecosystem.

Reflection

He reflects on personal growth, the importance of aligning decisions with user and team value, and the responsibility of foundational technology engineers to create lasting impact.