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Comment by Dangeranger | Hacker News Reader

This trend of using illustration to explain complex topics is really wonderful. I know that people may criticize it as childish, but I find it helpful and enlightening.

The illustrations that I've found most amazing and well done are created by people like:

Lin Clark (https://code-cartoons.com/)

Julia Evans (http://jvns.ca/zines/)

Linda Liukas (http://www.helloruby.com/)

Amy Wibowo (https://shop.bubblesort.io/)

You may notice a trend with the gender of the authors above. I personally believe that women have a better sense for simplifying complex ideas, and greater empathy and patience for teaching those ideas once they've been made simple.

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It's a long running tradition, especially in medical education.

Here's an edition from 17 years ago: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Brain-Coloring-Book-Concepts/...

Excellent example. I love the visual kinesthetic combination of these books and wonder if there has been studies on it's effect on learning.

When Google Chrome first came out in 2008, they used a series of cartoons to explain their innovations (multi-process browsing, JIT compilation for JS, etc).

https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

>I personally believe that women have a better sense for simplifying complex ideas

SELinux is not a "complex idea", SELinux is a tool with subpar documentation.

A coloring book does nothing to fix that.

My comment was in reference to topics covered beyond SELinux.

Comments like this, while factually correct, are the reason why we need these books.

It is a question of personal taste. I personally don't like it, there's too much distraction and too little substance. It might be interesting to illustrate some concept, but not everything imo.

I wonder if it's because a colouring book is not a Serious Adult thing, and women have - or allow themselves - a bit more wiggle room to not be Serious Adults all the time.

The discussion is about selinux, and not gender.

Maybe men don't feel comfortable publishing book in styles that others perceive as women's territory.

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