I consider myself a "hacker". I never went to college or university. I've spent thousands of spare-time hours in front of my various home computers. I've been programming since I was 14. I know assembler for several CPUs. I've participated in numerous Open Source projects for more than 15 years. I think I master every dusty corner of the language C. I'm very interested in network and security issues with a Unix angle. I detest crappy operating systems. I run Linux machines. I know Unix. I continuously use Unix systems and write Unix programs on my spare time. I know HTML. I've written lots of CGI's, shell scripts and perl things. I know how TCP/IP works. I know PPP and its sub protocols. I've written multi platform networking servers and clients. I've written my own interpreted script language with a separate compiler and I've written action-filled computer games. I've written device drivers on numerous operating systems, and even on Linux running on many different CPUs.

I consider coding an art. I really do. Good coders are cool people and coders who aren't good shouldn't be paid to code. Good coders are not as popular nor important today that I'd like them to be. Quality code is usually a forgotten issue in the huge corporate developing of today. All people are thought to do equally good. I wish people one day will realize that some people do better code, some do worse code. I'll become more appreciated that day.

You simply aren't a skilled programmer after a few years in college. You need time and time in front of a computer bent over a keyboard. You need hundreds of hard hours hacking.

Master C and the tools you write it in
To be a successful C programmer, you simply have to be skilled in the art of writing and using the language C. Basic knowledge takes you nowhere. Be an expert, or try another profession. You can never write fast and good code if you don't work quick n' easy in the text-editor of your choice.

Know your target hardware and its oddities
Although C is a somewhat higher level language than plain assembler, there are still many many times you can optimize the code you write depending on the nature of the CPU and other hardware that is gonna run the final result of your program.

Go with your first hunch
Don't let the less knowing point you in the wrong direction or let them design things just because you aren't 100% involved in a subject, believing that they who decide are. Always object if your first hunch says you are right.

Don't follow silly coding rules (like no #include within include files)
Silly coding rules making writing good and fast code a lot harder. Forbidding #include from include files can make a single change in a single header file affect lots and lots of other source files and require every one of them to get modified.

What is the point with hungarian/other prefix/suffix systems?
In large software projects development teams very often setup rules of how to write variable, function, define, struct and typedef names. They often involve prefixes and suffixes, more or less complicated. Not only do many of the persons have their own opinions of how the rules should be interpreted but changes to sources often don't change the prefix/suffixes (making them wrong is in my eyes far worse than having none at all).

Avoid identical code parts, use loops where applicable.
Very very many newbies, and even a little more experienced programmers use extensive cut n' pasting when programming, making long sequences of nearly identical program parts instead of making loops. While this may be a quick way to make a quick first version, updating and extending such a source code is a pain.

avoid using own (typedef'ed) types in header files included by many files
if the typedefs aren't in the same file What happens when your functions return their own typedef'ed type ? The sources that use your function have to include the files keeping your typedefs and they have to use your typedefs to store the result of your function(s)... Using plain C variable types is a lot better, and no assumptions or silly data conversions will be needed.

do not typedef away pointers to structs
Very often I end up looking at code where programmers typedef away a pointer to a struct in a manner like 'typedef struct foobar * foopoint', so that they all over the code can use foopoint instead of struct foobar *. I do not consider that productive, as it hides the true nature of the variable. C is not the language to use if you wanna hide things like that. In my eyes a construction where you declare a variable like 'foopoint boo = NULL' looks like your trying to do something illegal, since the lack of asterisks implies it isn't a pointer. It makes the code harder to read.