While stuff like the sites and collections suggested can be pretty awesome for improving the way you think about algorithms, and the nitty-gritty of writing an

While stuff like the sites and collections suggested can be pretty awesome for improving the way you think about algorithms, and the nitty-gritty of writing an application (especially one that does something interesting), the harder (or at least more subtle) skill to improve in my experience is larger-level program design. Unfortunately, I don't think that skill is improvable via small programs, let alone very small programs, although it seems like there should be a way to express some of the problems faced in such a manner that they would be. Double unfortunately, I've probably got ten years to go before I'd be able to accomplish that in any reasonable form.