More formal and comprehensive, absolutely. If you want something that's more friendly to neophytes, Beej's guide is the way to go. It's quite literally what they used in my upper div intro to Networking course at UCLA years ago.
A book that splits the difference very well is The Linux Programming Interface by Kerrisk. When I did network programming in class I leaned on it at least as much as Stevens.
It's a great book for all kinds of stuff, too, not just network programming.
