That's easy. After learning the language, study good C code. Try to grok how the masters build higher-level abstractions. Learn from widely used C code that is

That's easy. After learning the language, study good C code. Try to grok how the masters build higher-level abstractions. Learn from widely used C code that is not a toy. Examples: sqlite.org, git-scm.org If you don't understand something, look it up in the C standard doc. Most of the time, you will want to program for speed, and C will let you. Learn and practice C profiling. Also, you will need to learn defensive programming. The best source about this is "Learn C The Hard Way" by Zed Shaw: https://github.com/zedshaw/learn-c-the-hard-way-lectures https://github.com/zedshaw/learn-c-the-hard-way-lectures