“The ocean metaphor is very fitting for computer systems. As modern life is thought to have risen from the depths of the primordial ocean, so has modern programming risen from the design and construction of early computer architecture. The first programmers studied the hardware diagrams of the first computers to create the first programs.
Yet as life (and computing) began to wander away from the oceans from which they emerged, the ocean began to be perceived as a foreboding and dangerous place, inhabited by monsters. Ancient navigators used to place pictures of sea monsters and other mythical creatures in the uncharted waters. Here be dragons, the text would warn. Likewise, as computing has wandered ever further away from its machine-level origins, computer systems topics have often emerged as personal dragons for many computing students.”