How do you practice programming?

[Ray]

OK, maybe I shoot a more general question to the group since there are
so many great programmers here: how do you practice your craft?

I do it in the following way:

1. Set aside 30 minutes to 1 hour a day to read up on the latest
development, be it about the tool I'm using, the language, or the
platform, or the framework, etc.

2. Once every 1-2 months, go to Amazon, and look for the book with the
best reviews in a particular technology (e.g.: SQL Cookbook, etc.)

3. Practice something that I may not be using currently at work, but
always good to know, e.g.: I try to be reasonably competent in at least
2 major current languages--right now it's Java and C#, and 1 dynamic
language, which has been Python for quite some time. SQL is always
useful, so I try to practice that, especially the more complex queries
involving group bys and window function, etc.

How do you do your practice?