The following are books from my student days. These are sources from which I happened to learn the "everything in an hour, but longer to absorb" subject matter. I'd recommend Applied Cryptography as excellent, the other is just good.
I cannot find my automata book just now. It's down in the garage, and I want to stay inside where it is warm now. As for concurrency, I got part of that from the Tannenbaum OS book:
But the rest, I actually got from a coworker on the job! We did cover databases and ACID transactions in school, but that wasn't taught very well and I didn't really get it until I was doing real work.
Do some assembly language. It will give you a key advantage over everyone who is too scared to touch it.
Write a compiler and/or interpreter. This can actually be pretty small, and it will also give you an advantage over those too scared of something so seemingly "esoteric."
It came out in, like, 1995 didn't it? I remember that because all my IRC friends immediately got to work on crazy crypto tools with algorithms and ideas cadged from that book. It definitely didn't teach them that crypto was hard.
I remember that because all my IRC friends immediately got to work on crazy crypto tools with algorithms and ideas cadged from that book. It definitely didn't teach them that crypto was hard.
It's one thing to do some fun project. It's another thing to do something for production. It's yet another thing to read such a book and realize it means there's people who know a lot more about this than you. At the same time, it is a fun read for a techie.