[einhverfr]

My recommendation is to tackle ambitious projects as an open source programmer. Do things well beyond your comfort zone and expect to fail.

The fact is that you won't get better unless you actually fail and are introspective enough both to realize you did (there are programmers out there who never realize this and I have tried, unsuccessfully, to work with them). So pick something you aren't sure you can succeed at.

The second thing is to be evaluating your development challenges as you go, be introspective, and learn from them. Every development challenge is an opportunity to get better.

The third thing to do is to start reading about cracking software and start working on cracking your own software. If you can get others to crack your software, better yet. You will learn a lot about best practices from this.

The fourth thing to do is to try to work with teams of open source developers and learn from others. I have never learned anything from someone who always agreed with me, and a friend of mine is fond of saying, if a village has two wise men who always agree on everything, the village has one more wise man than it needs.