[vilius]

If you're just starting in programming you may thing that Computer Networks falls into a nice to know category. At least I did as a freshman in CS. At a time I was more interested in gaining practical knowledge: popular programming languages, frameworks, OOP. In fact you can become a successful programmer without knowing much how networks work.

The reason why I recommend learning about Computer Networks from scratch is how fascinating the subject is. The way layers are implemented, their interactions, how the overall complexity is reduced by having layers of responsibility. This pattern can be seen in other areas as well: hardware -> operating system -> SDK -> programming language -> framework -> DSL. Ultimately from a Turing complete machine to seeing 200 FPS 3D FPS game with 150 other players on your screen.