Read lots of books to understand how expert programmers think about problems. (SO and other sites don't qualify as this as they as they are focused on "How do I

Read lots of books to understand how expert programmers think about problems. (SO and other sites don't qualify as this as they as they are focused on "How do I do X?" which is a completely different thing -- mostly trivia) Pair program/code review to learn what you're doing wrong. Teach it if you want to really know it. PG's idea of writing a book is great, but I've found the interactive nature of hands-on teaching really makes me grok something. Writing, for me, helps me organize my thoughts, but coding is something you never do "perfectly" -- the goal is to solve a problem for real people, not create the perfect mathematical construct -- so I'm much more interested in how different personality styles and moods approach problem-solving in a language more than I am the details of the language itself. Each of these works at a different level: strategic, quality-control, and tactical. Depending on personality type, folks have a tendency to get hung up on one level or another -- as if learning all the syntax of a language or how to use the IDE is the same as mastery -- but for me I've found I need all of them in equal parts.