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Comment by Mathnerd314 | Hacker News Reader

> Unexpected tidbit: If you abbreviate the term 'interrupt descriptor table'. Then reverse it - You get 'TDI', which stands for Turbo Charged Diesel Injection, an engine developed by Volkswagen fo- Okay. Ethically, believe it or not but computers emit more CO2 than cars.

Does this really help people learn the material? I am doing a presentation on networking in a week or two for a high school group. Certainly I could include stuff like this, but to me it seems more like a distraction. If I was writing this I would rather include something like a sample table of how IDT's were used by old DOS video games. (Disclaimer: I'm 30)

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There's a huge difference between an adult talking to a bunch of teens and a teen addressing a bunch of teens. I'm not saying this would be the case with this particular thing but it's not hard to imagine something delivered by a peer which could at worst come across as dorky vs outright cringe when adopted by someone else.

If I were to include such a digression, I'd probably keep it as a footnote.

But all in all, great work, OP!

My pleasure, happy that you liked it

I think it's audience-dependent. For readers with less background and less pre-existing motivation to learn the material, I think it helps to cut down on the density a little. It's kind of a cruddy experience to have to pause and digest every sentence as you go and it makes it physically hard to read a book that way since you have to constantly track where you were.

If the audience has more background in the material and a stronger pre-existing motivation to read it, then it is probably a distraction, and they need a higher density of information to keep flow.

So true.

Especially with term highlighting, makes it 2x easier to read and keep the information flow to process (and funnier?).

My 2 cts: in Germany yes, in the rest of the world, absolutely leave it out.

> Disclaimer: I'm 30

This says it all- jokes aside, i couldn't resist writing a book without including combustion engines.

> I couldn't resist

The common refrain of a teenager... https://www.npr.org/2016/04/15/474348291/why-teens-are-impul... honestly at that age I never went out of my room, and I still got in trouble. If you do develop some self-control, you could look at https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dive-into-the-world-of-dos-v... or https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801... (c.f. also https://hackmd.io/@_01X9rimQmWH33Djf8QhoA/SkygF9WdP which is based on that book)

These are some of the useful link that i wish came up when googling, and DOS is fairly interesting in itself knowing it's behind everything from medical equipment to today's common refrain of teenagers.

I’m going to disagree with that other guy.

It’s your book. If you want to have a lighthearted fun digression about combustion engines then I think that’s fine.

When I read textbooks a fun little digression now and then doesn’t bother me at all. Usually it puts a smile on my face.

I am also in my 30’s like that guy and that’s my 2 cents.

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