I went to a community college and got a degree in computer science, but I found out I only learn very little about programming. As a result I landed byself a office assistant work (for a year now), I want to study on my own and apply for some internship / very entry level development job.

I am wondering how should a person learn to program now? I feel that I might not doing it correctly, I understand everyone has a different approach, but I am really clueless on what to do, as it seems I am 5-10 years away.

1) Read the old college programming textbook cover to cover, learn every single concepts, do all the practice problems and master them (1-2 times until error free). Currently reading this java book

2) Work on any project, keep on googling and reading tutorials (including the books on that specific language).

I have been doing 1, but the progress is really slow, about 2-5 pages / hour, over a 1000+ page book, I felt really discouraged. I have a few of them to go through (data struction, analyis algorthim, computer theory, operating system.) I wonder is this the right method to do? I know it is going to take time, but I am hoping to get some advice from current programmers.