How do you improve your programming skills?
Do you read books or blogs? Do you watch videos?
Do you just work on personal projects?
>>61881768
Read books, then apply the knowledge in programs you write to help you learn.
>>61881768
I read blogs to discover new technologies than use this in either personal projects or implement them (if tested enough) in commercial stuff.
Coding videos are a waste of time, watch conferences for different frameworks. The speaker usually do a good job of combining theory with practical stuff giving you good insight into new architectures, coding practices or technologies.
Also have at least one side project you are constantly working on.
>>61881768
I read books, and look around the net. Stackoverflow and other forums have some gold.
Apart from a normal learning book for a new language, I also make sure to get a programmer's reference book to help me along. These usually describe a few of the more advanced tasks that you can code,and is IMO good for getting a quick head start on programming most utilities, tools and services, especially for business use.
If i'm stuck with a problem in my code, I try to find an implementation that works (from stackoverflow or something), and then adapt the code therein to my needs.
I never watch videos on coding... I just find it's the wrong medium for relaying info for a text-based task.
If it's not work-related coding, I try not to use literature, the internet or other means of scrounging up code if it can be helped.
It keeps the creativity going, and might end up being a better implementation for the task than most you'd find on the 'net.
I also try to keep updated on performance tricks and caveats of a given language... "best practice" might not be best practice under your circumstances and in your implementation, and might give you problems down the road... or just horribly slow code