[mediocregopher]

- A lot of practice, which stemmed from a lot of fooling around and abandoned side-projects. I would deliberately start projects which were way over my head, with no intention of even getting something working, just to see how far I could get before getting bored.

- Learning new languages which had vastly different paradigms than the ones I was used to. Java to Perl to Javascript to PHP to Erlang to Clojure to Go to... Over time you learn patterns from one place you can bring to another, and learn patterns which exist in most places which you'd rather didn't.

- Lots of experience in the actual workforce, building things people (supposedly) wanted. There are aspects of programming which people spin their wheels on which really don't matter in the long run, and conversely there are aspects which go ignored but are very important. Working on real, rubber-to-the-road projects gives you perspective on what actually matters.

- Being a daily archlinux user (I don't use any non-archlinux OS on any machine I own). Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's an incredibly good use of your time to figure out. Once you're comfortable in arch, every other Unix-like OS (ie, most of them that you'll ever probably work with) will feel familiar.