Anecdote: I emailed Richard Stallman the exact same thing. He basically told me to learn Lisp. Without stepping on anyone's toes, I think you should learn to p

Anecdote: I emailed Richard Stallman the exact same thing. He basically told me to learn Lisp. Without stepping on anyone's toes, I think you should learn to program against the CPU, not stay in a sandbox of sorts. Regarding the topics you mentioned, there are a few classic books that cover exactly that and they've gotten good/fantastic reviews on Amazon. I'm talking about the Dragon Book, Tennenbaum's books on OS development and Richard W Stevens on TCP/IP. (Maybe you are asking for another layer of abstraction -- in that case, ignore.)