This isn't particularly cursed. I mean we've had avalanche pulse generators for well over half a century easily. It's just exploiting semiconductor characteristics they don't teach you in the usual garbage undergrad textbooks.
I think that counts as "cursed" from a design-for-manufacturing perspective.
"After a production run of 12,000 units the TR-808 was no more." https://secretlifeofsynthesizers.com/the-strange-heart-of-th...
Out of interest, please could you give some examples of textbooks you consider garbage, and some you consider not to be (undergrad or otherwise)?
Good -> Razavi (Fundamentals of Microelectronics), Art of Electronics, most Jim Williams stuff (AN's and articles), Bowick RF Circuit design. They're actually useful.
But personally I think the whole Sedra/Smith vs Razavi argument is basically vi vs emacs for EEs.
Probably a good start. We shall see.
I was going to write my own book on the matter but quite frankly I don't have the time or energy for it.
I would never recommend AoE to pretty much anybody nowadays. The problem is that AoE happily presents circuits you should almost never use right next to circuits you should almost always use with no indications distinguishing the two.