[jhpriestley]

I had trouble getting through much of it, even though I tend to read technical books for fun. Lisp in Small Pieces or the Lambda Papers are more educational and easier to read. They will change the way you think about programming far more than the Dragon book.

The dragon book is okay as a comprehensive reference, but is bad at communicating the central idea of anything. You might want to skim it, looking for topics that interest you, then seek out several sources for those topics and see which clicks for you. If you start reading the Dragon book from page 1, you risk getting bogged down.

[dlo]

I definitely would not recommend starting from page 1. You can pick at it gradually. Personally, I've gravitated more toward the second half of the book where it gets far more interesting. (I have the 2nd edition, where coverage of the back-end is vastly improved.)