[LeafStorm]

Two and a half years into my bachelor's, Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation is the only computer science textbook I've had so far that I'd say I really found useful for anything beyond the homework problems, besides K.N. King's C Programming: A Modern Approach.

(To keep this on topic, my assembly instructor -- the legendary [to NC State students] Dana Lasher -- posts his course pack online. [1] It's a comprehensive introduction to computer architecture topics and original 8086 assembly programming.)

[1] http://courses.ncsu.edu/csc236/lec/001/cops.htm

[justin66]

How does Sipser's content compare to Ullman's (free) Foundations of Computer Science?

http://i.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html

As far as x86 assembly goes, I found Kip Irvine's book to be pretty great. (not free) It's not a subject I would want to spend more time on, though.

[Fixnum]

They're not similar at all. FoCS is mostly about introductory programming and data structures (with a tiny bit about automata). Sipser's book is about computation and complexity - it's comparable to Hopcroft and Ullman's Intro to automata theory, languages, and computation, for which Ullman recommends FoCS or equivalent as a prerequisite.

[justin66]

Interesting. Thanks.

Coincidentally I just signed up for Ullman's Automata course at Coursera. The description makes it seem pretty basic but I'm interested to see what he does with it.