Muchnick’s book is excellent, and we wrote the open source GLSL compiler using it. I wish it was a little more opinionated on how to do things right and avoid wasting your time (Go SSA! Right away! Even if you feel your problem space is special and SSA might not help you!) as opposed to just reporting on all the variations that exist in the wild, but it’s hard to fault it for that when I wish software theory was more grounded in reality in general.
And, yeah, I’m proud to say I still don’t know how to write a lexer or parser. I’ve got flex/bison for that.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com fixed what I was doing with personal finance. In particular, not saving for retirement consistent with what my goals are on reflection. The best part is that what he tells you to do for investing is really easy and involves almost no choice, which meant I got started immediately while reading more about other life changes. He also drills into you that the naive cost/benefit calculation for outsourcing small home repairs done by a lot of us geeks misses less obvious costs of outsourcing and under-counts the benefit of learning skills, which was a big update for me.