I'm surprised that most people seem to have ignored this line:
> it’s about doing, as opposed to knowing or learning
After graduating, I had to teach myself everything in that list before I could actually do anything that I found interesting. Now, this obviously doesn't apply if you're, as you say, writing a compiler, but for the average CS student, this is a great list to complete.
The key word here being "average". Many of my classmates weren't even able to do the things on the list, much less write a toy OS or language. So yes, for average people this list is a good stepping stone to become above average.
> it’s about doing, as opposed to knowing or learning
After graduating, I had to teach myself everything in that list before I could actually do anything that I found interesting. Now, this obviously doesn't apply if you're, as you say, writing a compiler, but for the average CS student, this is a great list to complete.