On one occasion, as Master Foo was traveling to a
conference with a few of his senior disciples, he was
accosted by a hardware designer.
The hardware designer said: "It is rumored that you are a
great programmer. How many lines of code do you write per
year?"
Master Foo replied with a question: "How many square
inches of silicon do you lay out per year?"
"Why...we hardware designers never measure our work in
that way," the man said.
"And why not?" Master Foo inquired.
"If we did so," the hardware designer replied, "we would
be tempted to design chips so large that they cannot be
fabricated - and, if they were fabricated, their
overwhelming complexity would make it be impossible to
generate proper test vectors for them."
Master Foo smiled, and bowed to the hardware designer.
In that moment, the hardware designer achieved
enlightenment.
