I always liked how he would crack the ocassional joke every now and then in his books. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
It would be nice if we could just plug a crystal ball into
a free PCI slot to help out with the prediction,
but so far this approach has not borne fruit.
Lacking such a peripheral,
various ways have been devised to do the prediction. [...]
It amazes me that the majority of computer related books I've read are really not fit for human consumption. It's really refreshing to see that he understood this and made his work and lectures - I've seen a few on YouTube - as engaging and entertaining as possible while still being clear and concise.
Code is for computers, but in the end, programming is for humans.
The witty humor scattered all over in his books really did make them a lot more fun to read! :-)
I remember him describing Intel's primary design consideration in developing the Pentium processor series as being "1. Backwards compatibility. 2. Backwards compatibility. 3. Backwards compatibility."
On another note, Linus Torvalds described "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" as "the book that launched me to new heights".
Or explaining the OSI network protocol stack by two philosophers talking about their love for rabbits in different languages via translating secretaries: "Ik hou (sic) van konijnen" and "J'aime les lapins".
Jokes don't have to be false — it's actually in vogue these days for jokes to be accurate observations of reality stated in funny ways. For example, Louis CK's joke about the unfairness of banking fee structures:
Ever get so broke that the bank charges you money for not having enough money? The bank calls up and says "Hi, we're calling because you don't have enough money." And you go, "I know!" So they say, "You have insufficient funds." "Yep, that's a good way of putting it too, I'd agree with that. I find my funds to be grossly insufficient." "You only have $20, so we're going to have to charge you $15." Fifteen dollars, that's how much it costs to own $20. But here's the fucked-up part — now I only have five. Now I don't even have the money that I paid to have.
I think Tanenbaum's joke is a good example of this sort of humor.
