Ask HN: How can I become a better programmer?

- tooling: learn heroku, github/git, unit and functional /integration tests, capistrano, Firebug/chrome dev tools, selenium/watir etc (etc could include continuous integration/deploy libs,

http://pragprog.com/book/pg_git/pragmatic-guide-to-git

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html

- learn a couple editors. e.g for scala/java/clojure, I think people should learn one of emacs/vim and IntelliJ.

- the db/serialization/search trilogy: learn JSON, XML (just to read XML, pretty important in javaland), a relational database, a nonSQL, and a fulltext indexing lib e.g. sphinx or elastic. Look at protobufs, avro also

- learn linux setup/tuning pretty thoroughly (inital setup with ssh, iptables, postgres, etc), basic monitoring tools, and the stuff that heroku or digital ocean or linode provide.

And read everything written by Uncle Bob starting with his books "Clean Code and "Clean Coder". He has a lot of blog articles out there as well as various conference videos. And he is also a Ruby developer in addition to C++ and Java.

Learn and apply the SOLID principles http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/posts/gregory/055-issue-23... and maybe read some more of those Ruby Best Practices articles.

Don't let the speed freaks drive you. Many of them are writing bad code fast. It is better to write clean maintainable code at a slower rate than it is to rush into things and create a complex unmaintainable mess. It is possible that some of the complex code that you have difficulty with is actually bad code and not something to emulate in your practice.

P.S. focus on learning Ruby not on Rails. Ruby is the basis for Rails but Rails is not the only Ruby game in town. Someday Rails will fade away but Ruby will still be going strong with new frameworks like Sinatra or Celluloid or Cramp.

You can learn a lot from these people just by showing up and expressing a desire to learn.