[haxzie]

Two things I have seen most of the really good programmers I have known. One, they read a lot of code, they mostly spend time digging into open source codebases and quite a lot of time contributes to them as well, which goes to the second point. Two, getting your code reviewed by a lot more programmers, with more experience than you, you get a much better perspective on a lot of things.

[hnthrowaway0328]

Good point. I have one question: How do I get other people to CR (Code Review) my personal projects? I'm actually willing to pay a bit for that but always find it weird to ask around. Most of the time my personal projects are small, but not trivially small so that I can put it on Stackoverflow. Something like 1,000 loc.

[collingreen]

Sounds like a cool opportunity for a matchmaking site - swapping reviews of personal code with the goal of learning and practicing both the coding and the review. There are practice interview sites that work kind of that same way.