Deep Cuts
WTF is a "deep cut"?
Some artists value the idea of an album as a unified creative work, and they put a lot of thought into which songs go on an album—and in what order. They might want a really catchy song at the start of the album, a strong start to the second side, and a big (or thought-provoking) finish.
A song is called a "cut" because a recording master was made by literally cutting a groove into a disc, and artists would cut a song in the studio. A deep cut is a song buried deep in an album that isn’t a radio single but is still great—the kind of song that becomes a fan favorite. Check out "Loving Cup", which is smack dab in the middle of Exile on Main St. and is easily overlooked among the hits all over that album.
This section is like that: cool stuff that isn’t critical enough to include in the chapter, but might turn out to be really interesting or useful. I like the C# language a lot, and there are a ton of great features that I don’t get into because I know many of my students don’t need a bunch of extra stuff thrown at them. So this is where I can put some of that stuff. They’re brief and, where appropriate, I link to a reliable source of additional information on the topic.
And just to be clear, this is what a normal books would call the appendices…
Binary Numbers and How Computers Work
Deep Cut from Chapter 1 - Computers and Coding
The chapters of this eBook are subtitled using binary to show basic examples of the numbering system: 0001 is, well, 1 in decimal. And 0100 is 4 in decimal. We won’t get into binary numbers, but it’s not very complicated and is kind of interesting if you’re a nerd.
The amazing code.org project has a playlist of great, short videos on how computers work—including binary numbers—if you want to know a little more without going too crazy: How Computers Work
