Via lots and lots of bad designs. Oh and then more bad designs. Slowly, you start to realize what didn't work, so you try something different. Read about a new

Via lots and lots of bad designs. Oh and then more bad designs. Slowly, you start to realize what didn't work, so you try something different. Read about a new pattern, try it. Realize why it doesn't work in specific cases. Slowly, you start to find things that do work. And you start to reuse them. And sooner or later, your code becomes more robust. You start seeing less spurious bugs. Your programs seem cleaner and faster. You start to notice themes and patterns, some of which are a bit complex to even verbalize - almost like a muscle memory. You start seeing these themes across many types of systems. Revisiting programs later on, you realize old mistakes you made, which further solidifies the "feeling" for what's good and bad design in which cases. There's no real shortcut here. It's just a matter of experience. The only thing aside from simply writing more code is to read more code (whatever form this might take). I highly suggest getting involved in OSS.