Memory hierarchy, assembly, and the art of realizing I didn’t learn that much.
Date:
Computer System Fundamentals (229)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Sometimes I was horrified by how underwhelming this core course felt—like it had failed me, or maybe I had failed it, or maybe both.
So what did I know going in? Roughly this:
- Memory close to the CPU is faster than memory far away.
- x86-64 assembly can be translated back and forth with higher-level languages.
- Pointers are little arrows in memory that point to other chunks of memory.
What did I know coming out? …pretty much the same things, just a little more precise.
Not All Bad
Maybe that’s not so terrible. Accuracy is something. But honestly, I felt like a bit more confidence in practical system-building—say, knowing how to spec out and assemble a desktop with the right SSD, RAM, CPU, and GPU—would’ve been more useful.
Instead, I walked away still a “proud CS student” who ends up going to prebuilt vendors, paying extra just to get parts that might be worth twenty bucks on their own.
On the bright side: last semester I did get myself an ROG laptop with an RTX 4070. Not a desktop, but still—absolutely in love.