interrupt

Definition

A hardware or software signal that rudely tells the processor to drop everything it's doing and handle something 'more important' right now, like your keyboard input or network packet. It's the computing equivalent of someone barging into your office during deep work. Without interrupts, modern computing wouldn't work; with them, your CPU has the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel.

Example Usage

The developer spent three hours debugging why the system was crashing, only to discover a rogue interrupt handler was firing every microsecond.

Source: Computer science terminology

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ttyob

tend to your own business...