In my experience, there is no better way than to build it. You learn quickly from your failures and become aware of subtle issues that no text-book or article will ever touch since they are so domain specific.

The best way to learn by doing, IMO, is by joining an organization that works on a large and complex code base. It won't be as exciting as writing new code, but adding to an existing complex system will force you to take into consideration things that you otherwise would not.