The progress of a year

Even though I'm now rewriting the whole Mornomia server, I still can't stop thinking about how I will make Galaxy Stations, once I'm done with Mornomia. Thinking about one project while writing another, is sometimes really helpful.

For example, as I can remember, the old code of the server was completely unstructured and could only be used for MMORPG's (But I think even that is nonsense, because I was so close-minded while writing the code, it could seriously only be used for Mornomia). If I even had the old code, I wouldn't know where to start fixing or improving it. It was, as the client, a mess of undocumented, unstructured, and sometimes unreadable code. It would be quite a nightmare to introduce another person with that code.

Today, things have drastically changed. I document and comment my code everywhere where it seems appropriate, and use a version system that simplifies the process of introducing other people to the code. Even instead of making a compiling script, I use a nice makefile.

That's the progress of one year. I code much more fluently and structured, even though I'm learning several new languages. It just shows that with enough dedication to a specific subject, you can achieve a lot. I know many programmers, who code regularly, but they write only slightly better than other coders. I think, to get truly better at coding, you have to make yourself a goal, not just code. Maybe you have an old method, which can be improved by techniques you have learned. Also, as I could notice, there is always a feeling of "could I do it better?" in code you just wrote. And yap, most of the time, the answer is "Yes, you can!"
Look up algorithms, learn more about the standard libraries of your language - all this helps a lot. As I stated before, you need a lot of dedication for this. Sitting on a chair and watching videos on YouTube isn't going to make you a better programmer. In fact, if you talk a lot about programming, and talk about it more than you actually code, you are not a programmer. A scam, if you will. That happened to me a few times, and also to people I know, so it's no rarity, but a bitter fact. That's why you always need a project to work on. If you don't have one, make one up! Working on games is always fun, and improving them, too. They have often complex algorithms and you need to learn a lot to make truly nice games.
This is much better than doing nothing and it helps to improve your coding skills - something we all need to do.