What I often find to be the case is that a course in college only loosely follows the assigned book. Professors like to navigate through the subject material in

What I often find to be the case is that a course in college only loosely follows the assigned book. Professors like to navigate through the subject material in a very personal way, which will often not be the way that it is covered in the book... if it is covered in the book at all! For this experience, I would suggest going through lecture notes and, when necessary, supplementing them with a book. While books are certainly valuable in someone's education, I think we are forgetting about the projects. It is very instructive, not to mention very satisfying, to implement an operating system, a compiler, or a transport layer (that interoperates with real TCP!). Moreso than reading the books of a college course, I recommend doing its projects. To get started, I recommend the Pintos operating system, designed for Stanford's operating systems course, CS 140, traditionally thought to one of the more difficult programming courses in their undergraduate curriculum. Some links. http://www.scs.stanford.edu/11wi-cs140/ http://www.scs.stanford.edu/11wi-cs140/ http://www.scs.stanford.edu/05au-cs240c/ http://www.scs.stanford.edu/05au-cs240c/