For the nearly 30 years that Amdahl competed for IBM's mainframe turf, many 
within Amdahl referred to the Principles of Operation using the proper 
initialism of PoO (yes, initialism is a word). As IBMers generally referred to 
the document as the PoPs, this continued to be a friendly poke in the eye from 
one mainframe competitor to another.

During a technical presentation that I was doing in Kansas City, one attendee 
took strong objection to my terminology — asserting that I was "talking dirty" 
by using a scatological term for programming Scripture. After explaining the 
concepts of abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms, and mnemonics ad nauseum — 
and why PoO was the proper term to use — she conceded that perhaps I wouldn't 
burn in hell for all eternity ... just for a few millennia. 

PoO is still my choice.

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