The Importance of Technical Fundamentals and How to Practice Them – Insights from Meituan Tech Leaders

At Meituan there is a saying, “practice the basics,” and founder Wang Xing interprets basic skills as the fundamental actions in both business and management; solid basics, when practiced consistently, generate huge value over time.

The message emphasizes adopting the right mindset for long‑term challenges, improving oneself through repetitive work, and doing simple tasks exceptionally well.

Technical teams are asked what their professional basics are and how to cultivate them, with several senior engineers sharing their perspectives.

One leader notes that a “good” programmer and a “bad” programmer can both meet the same requirements, but they differ markedly in efficiency, quality, maintainability, readability, and scalability—differences that stem largely from their technical fundamentals.

Technical fundamentals exist in every line of code, requiring continuous accumulation and practice by engineers.

To hone these fundamentals, one should not settle for merely meeting current demands but constantly raise standards: reduce bugs, avoid past pitfalls, anticipate future changes, and treat code as documentation.

Another leader explains that solid basics become “muscle memory,” improving delivery quality and efficiency, which in turn frees time for learning higher‑level skills.

The core fundamentals include computer science basics, coding conventions, design patterns, unit testing, and other universally applicable skills that are independent of specific business domains, roles, or implementation methods.

Improvement methods are threefold: (1) learn industry‑standard basic skills to broaden knowledge, (2) engage in massive, years‑long practice, and (3) regularly review and reflect on past work to identify growth points.

Fundamentals are easy to learn but hard to master, and they possess continuous improvement potential.

One speaker cites the 10,000‑hour rule, stating that sustained effort over many hours transforms an ordinary person into a world‑class master, a principle that applies strongly to engineers.

Advice includes maintaining curiosity, deep thinking, diligent work, pursuit of excellence, and long‑term patience.

Technical fundamentals also determine a company’s overall technical level; for engineers, design, coding, and bug‑fixing are three critical basic skills.

There are no shortcuts: each design, code, and bug‑fixing activity is an opportunity to strengthen fundamentals, and periodic retrospectives aid continuous improvement.

Using the highest work standards to drive the practice of fundamentals helps raise overall delivery standards.

Finally, the article points to two additional Meituan engineering articles—“How Engineers Can Improve Themselves at Work?” and “Ten Principles for Engineer Growth”—which elaborate on learning principles, efficiency, and career advancement.