"I highlighted a ton of things".
I haven't read Founders at Work, but I really enjoyed Coders at Work by Peter Seibel in the same series. I had the same feeling with that book - I scribbled down a lot of notes on interesting things to follow up on. My conclusion (from my review on Amazon[1]):
If you are seriously interested in programming, this is definitely one of the books you should read. Highly recommended.