Nope, I was not at all offending the prof. What I was saying that many times one guy knows something ( no one in particular) and then it looks as if he knows everything to people who are new to the field. Like when I was in college, if someone uses a pointer to call a function, he used to be termed as the nerdiest one, but then its a very common thing later on.
I will cite another example, long back I was reading about ARM processor out of curiosity and my manager knew that. There was some req to optimize some arm firmware code and he sent me to the clients site, citing me as an expert in ARM processors Dont ask me what happened to me when I reached there I somehow could help the engineers there, but then I guess you get the idea.
It's nothing like that. I am 3rd year and highly regarded by fellow students, so that's not a problem. I am not trying to act all smart, but even some of the best at our school look to me if they have some problems in their code, so I have a pretty deep understanding for my age and education. And again, I am not trying to be full of myself, but trust me, this guy really has a deep understanding, and even so much so that the best students at our school highly regard him.
This guy knows what's happening at a very low level when processes are running, at machine code and assembler level. When a program crashes, he sometimes goes very low level as to possible sources of crash. I understand what he is saying, but it's not something I think of immediately.