Success stories for programming?

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Anyone have any experience and stories of how you became better at coding/programming whether
it be a recommendation for a web service (free) or something/other?

Udacity.com........the computer science course

Gather resources, know where to look when your resources aren't sufficient, and keeping abreast of the current trends and techniques.

That said I spend a fair amount on books in the languages that I know and or want to learn. However some online resources that are invaluable are the following:

StackOverflow - this site probably has all the answers you will ever need on any programming language you will ever encounter. Sifting through it can be tedious if you aren't sure of the question though.

GitHub - this is a great place to look at other's code and see how someone else does it or if you need a plugin for a larger app you may be building

Reddit's Programming page - good if you have a question, want to read or exchange news about software development etc..

DZone or any other tech magazine- Dzone pushes out content from every facet of the tech industry and there are other great magazines (online) that cater to specific areas of tech and development. Dzone just happens to be a broad one.

Flipboard - There are a lot of "magazines" that are either company or user based covering a large swath of the tech industry or you can curate your own. Most of my Flipboard is tech/science related and covers both individuals and company magazines.

Challenging yourself - this is probably the best tool. Find something that is easy to do and see if you can do it better (at first) Like a video player or RSS reader. There are plenty of tutorials available to walk you through the basic process of either in multiple languages.

Meetups/Local groups - search for local groups in your area that have the same interest as you and network with them.

YouTube - Also a good place to learn a specific programming language or to learn what other developers do during the development process. (Hint: the good ones do a lot of planning/prototyping/diagrams before writing a single line of code)

Those are the resources I use in my toolkit. As far as books any of the "Bibles" are excellent (though pricy). The "Dummy" books are good if you have no idea what you are doing. Speaking of books, the library is another excellent resource. Every one I have been to (quite a few) have a section for computer sciences (though they vary in size and content).

Use "In Easy Steps" book series
Ignore all trends.
Learn C, not C++ or any other abomination.

A tenacious desire to keep learning. Once you learn a few languages, you'll quickly learn others.

And pick a modern programming language that can land you a job, not something from the late 70s.