Certainly reading a lot of good C code is a part of this; for me, reading the predecessor Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...) was a key part of my learning serious C in the early '90s.
Plus of course hacking on programs, most often various ersatz Emacs versions that would run on a PDP-11. I.e. something I really wanted to get working to my satisfaction.
Plus of course hacking on programs, most often various ersatz Emacs versions that would run on a PDP-11. I.e. something I really wanted to get working to my satisfaction.