[muffinman26]

There are so many books on learning a programming language, that I'll ignore that topic.

Someone else mentioned data structures and algorithms. Algorithmic complexity is particularly important. The Algorithm Design Manual is a great book in this space.

As a low level developer, I've also found the following topics way more useful than I expected:

- Finite State Machines (These are the basis for everything from inter-device communication protocols to simple video game AIs.)

- Binary arithmetic and boolean logic (Rarely relevant, but absolutely essential for diagnosing certain types of parsing errors, buffer overflows, etc.)

- The Halting Problem and P = NP (Useful when a manager tries to get you to do something that is actually impossible.)

I learned these from intro to Computer Science classes in university, but honestly Wikipedia is probably a good place to start. I think the (middle grade) book Lorem Ipsum also covers most of these concepts.