Paul Graham's what to study in college : My major take-away is how on our road to becoming hacker we need to be consistently learning from others who are already good hackers. I learned the importance of working on individual projects outside of class as this will help in improving my programming skills. I, however disagree with what he said about the social sciences focusing on "useless" issues. I also believe that what a person should study should be dependent on what they love doing instead of mere statistics about the program.
ESR's How to become a hacker : I really loved the part about the hacker culture being independent of the particular medium the hacker works in, meaning that anyone can become a "hacker" in their own field of study even if it is not CS! I also got a clearer distinction between a hacker and a cracker. The article also emphasized on collaboration and how no problem should ever be solved twice, but it can only be improved.
Peter Norvig's Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (not 21 days) : I loved how in this article interest is put forward as one of the keys of improving one's programming skills. It emphasized how the level of performance can be increased even by highly experienced individuals. learning more languages also helps to improve one's programming skills.
Jeff Atwood's How To Become a Better Programmer by Not Programming : In this article, Bill Gates was quoted as saying that experience does not programming easier and does not improve ones skills. I highly disagree with this notion because in any area of life people can always improve and there are not just two extreme sides, the good and the bad programmers. I feel like Peter Norvig gives a better outline of how people can improve their programming skills.
Reading Non-Fiction