Good: split your time between activities and reading something as satisfying as the things you “devour”. To that end, I would plus one Hackers (Levy) and Code (Petzold). Also, the Cathedral and the Bazaar by esr
For an activity ymmv depending on how much time you can spend; an alternative to building a computer from scratch, or an OS from scratch, is to buy a vintage cheapie running cp/m or dos, something where the OS isn’t abstracting memory management for you. Growing up in the 80s, I think managing my own memory and _everything_ that implies was the greatest teacher.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/
and other things from esr at
http://www.catb.org/~esr/
including the aforementioned jargon file. Here’s one I hadn’t stumbled on before, ‘Things Every Hacker Once Knew’
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/things-every-hacker-once-knew/
For an activity ymmv depending on how much time you can spend; an alternative to building a computer from scratch, or an OS from scratch, is to buy a vintage cheapie running cp/m or dos, something where the OS isn’t abstracting memory management for you. Growing up in the 80s, I think managing my own memory and _everything_ that implies was the greatest teacher.