For the last, hmm, 6 months I've been reading into Programming in C, I got myself K&Rv2, BEEJ's socket guide, Expert C programming, Linux Systems Programming, the ISO/IEC 9899:1999 specification (real, and not draft). After receiving them from Amazon, I got Linux installed, and got to it.

I'm done with K&R, about halfway through Expert C Programming, but still feel weak as a programmer, I'm sure it takes much more than 6 months of reading to become truly skilled, but my question is this:

I've done all the exercises in K&Rv2 (in chapter 1) and some in other chapters, most of which are generally really boring. How do I lift my skills, and become truly great? I've invested money, time and a general lifestyle for something I truly desire, but I'm not sure how exactly to achieve it.

Could someone explain to me, perhaps if I need to continuously code, what exactly I'm to code? I'm pretty sure, coding up hello world programs isn't going to teach me any more than I already know about anything.

A friend of mine said "read" (with emphasis on read) a man page a day, but reading is all I do, I want to do, but I'm not sure what! I'm interested in security, but I'm not sure as a novice what to code that would be considered enough.

Ah, I hope you don't delete this paste :)

Thanks