When I was at university I wanted to take a class that had 'introduction to computer networks' as a prerequisite, but I didn't want to wait 2 semesters for it to come around again after taking networks first. I spoke to the professor and he said he'd let me enroll in the course if I promised to carefully read Beej's guide first, since it contains all the essentials I'd really need for this follow-on. So, this saved me 6 months, what a golden nugget!
Same here. My course was a simple one and didn't include network programming, and at the same time I was learning about select() and co in C. This was a great primer especially for me as I had some Python knowledge; it really helped with understanding network programming at a lower level.
Even if you don't code the examples, reading them will give you so much information.
+1, The same happened with me too. In my university, the professor teaching Computer Networks never understood about computer networks, forget UNIX, he used to come to class mugging some programs up. This guide helped a lot to start with UNIX, I was so overwhelmed that i went on and sent fan mail to beej xD.
