Ways to become a better programmer:
- Practive! The more you program, the better you become. The harder the thing you program, the better you become. This is the single most important thing you could do. All the great programmers I know program outside of work, in their own time. That is, they take an interest in programming and practice even when they don't _have_ to.
- Read code wrtten by people better than you. This will inspire you and give you ideas on how to improve your own code.
- Go to local user groups or meetups. Meeting other programmers outside of work will give plenty of opportunities to improve, by talking about ideas, showing each other projects or code or by working on projects together. If the group also does talks/presentations/tutorials, then you have even more opportunity to learn new things and improve.
- Learn new programming langauges is a good way of improving your programming skill, as long as the programming languages you learn are all different. For example, if you know Java, you won't get a lot out of learning Java and if you know Ruby, you won't get much out of learning Python etc (unless you want to use a specific library for those languages). However, learning something completely different, like Haskell or prolog or Common Lisp would help make you a better programmer. Basically, learn a language that is of a different paradigm than the ones you already know. The language itself might not be useful to you, but the concepts, techniques and ideas of those lnaguages will improve your programming skill.
- As far as books go, people have different tastes. Most people will recommend the classics (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs; The Art of Programming, Code Complete, The Pragmatic Programmer and so on). They're good books, but may or may not be what you want.
- You can contribute as much or as little to open source projects as you want or have time for. Even just fixing a bug here and there is beneficial to the project, so find yourself a project that interests you and contibute what you can - but don't worry too much it if you find you don't have enough time. Understanding other peoples code and fixing their bugs is a great way to improve your own skill.
- Blogs.. I don't know. Its definitely a matter of taste. Keep reading articles linked by Gacker News and other such sites and bookmark blogs whos articles you like. Or go on stackoverflow.com and find people who post great answers - they may have blogs that would interest you. Bascially, try and find intelligent people who post about things that interest you.
Anyway, good luck!