Improve your programming skills...

Programming is not knowledge, but, a skill. It cannot be learnt just reading books or, even, attending courses or classes. A skill is to be developed and not learnt! Another thing I would like to mention here is that if you can’t really think, it’s not a good idea to learn programming. But, if you want to try thinking, try programming. ;-)
I would like to share some tips on developing programming skills.

Be clear at concepts
When you learn a concept, I strongly recommend you to make sure you know what it is, how it works and where it can be used. People really think some stuff in programming is really a waste. One such example is the ‘continue’ keyword available in C++. ‘continue’ skips an iteration in a loop, but, think of its application. It can be used in calculation determinant of a matrix where we need to skip a row or a column.

Experiment on things you learn
Practical approach is very important. It isn’t just enough if you know the concepts. You should also verify if it is really works or not! Also try new things with the concepts you know. I’ll give you one such example. You might know the concepts of “type casting” and “pointers”. But, have you tried “pointer type casting”??? Think… there are many such examples.

Logical vs. theoretical approach
If you come across a code segment, think of its logical functioning rather than a theoretical working. One small example is that “left shift” should be understood as multiplication by powers of 2 along with knowing that it shifts the bits towards left.

The stuff I’ve discussed is at a very basic level. The ocean of programming is deep and it’s up to you to dive deep into it and explore. Comments are welcome. Happy programming!!!