1. Read code written by master programmers (e.g., http://golang.org/src/ http://golang.org/src/, http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/ http://plan9.

1. Read code written by master programmers (e.g., http://golang.org/src/ http://golang.org/src/, http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/ http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/) to learn how it's done and to keep you humble. ;) But beware the opposite danger of becoming disillusioned when you realize that most of the code you will encounter in the real world is not written by master programmers. 2. Understand that much of what you learn to do as an undergraduate CS student are "historical reenactments" (http://research.swtch.com/2008/03/rotating-hashes.html http://research.swtch.com/2008/03/rotating-hashes.html). The core algorithms and data structures you need are almost always provided by the language or libraries.