Understand the tools and languages you use day to day inside and out. If you know how these things work internally you'll be 3x better than most programmers.

Understand the tools and languages you use day to day inside and out. If you know how these things work internally you'll be 3x better than most programmers. Fail as much as possible in an environment that is okay with failure. My environments have been side projects at home and professional work as well. Make sure you know why it failed and what you can do better next time.