>Reading white papers is a skill in its own, but as almost anything else, it can be learnt. I'm currently taking this great course [1] with Dave O'Hallaron (co

>Reading white papers is a skill in its own, but as almost anything else, it can be learnt. I'm currently taking this great course [1] with Dave O'Hallaron (co-author of Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective / the 213 textbook [2]), in which we read and discuss papers about building scalable Internet services (list of papers available on the site). As part of the course we write critiques of each paper, including a quick summary and some notes about likes, dislikes, and questions for discussion. Taking the time to write this out explicitly really forces me to think more deeply about what each paper is about. And, the reading-group format with discussion with other people is helpful - hearing different perspectives and opinions really improves my understanding as well. I'd definitely recommend taking notes and trying to find a reading group for better understanding. As other comments have mentioned, Adrian Colyer's The Morning Paper [3] also has interesting reads. [1] http://course.ece.cmu.edu/~ece845/ http://course.ece.cmu.edu/~ece845/ [2] http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/ http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/ [3] https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.acolyer.org/