Quotes from Computer Architecture

In the distant past, I took a Computer Architecture course. The professor was one of those old graybeard types, and was given to saying things that were quite entertaining. Since I was in the class with a good friend (*), I took to writing them down. Recently, I was going through some papers and found the list.

• "A bunch, here, could mean a whole lot."
• "It's true you have a lot of them, but after a while, you don't."
• "Loops do tend to go back."
• "Sometime today, which means 'not yet'..."
• "Not only quickly, but works faster than the other..."
• "Devices don't usually pop up at random in personal computers."
• "This problem with having devices identify themselves is fairly useful."
• "Now, get yourself a compiler..."
• "Books like 'Internet for Dummies', which, of course, shouldn't be allowed..."
• "...a number of other things--actually quite a lot."

As a bonus, one day he put a schematic of a Pentium processor on the overheard, just for us to look at before class started. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't easy to read. He opened class by saying "Today we're going to talk about ophthalmology, and why you can't read what's written on this screen." From where we were sitting, we could see one of our fellow students dutifully begin to write the heading "Optimology".

* We sat in the back of a large-ish lecture hall and tended to participate more than most of the other students. By "participate", I mean we would answer yes/no questions with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The other students must have wondered why the professor would ask a question, then respond to as if he'd gotten an answer after a few seconds of silence.