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As a general purpose programmer, what should you learn first and what should you learn later on?
Here are some skills I wonder about...
On which skills should I focus first?
SQL -- learn immediately. Don't worry about DBA stuff, but master queries, table and view creation, some optimization, joins, etc.
Regular Expressions -- Handy but almost never critical. Any time I need a RegEx I just google around for it and test until I find a good one.
Multi-threading / Concurrency -- Useful to some but difficult to learn. Learn them when you're working on things that require them.
Functional Programming -- Not generally useful on a professional level. Fun to know, and many FP concepts are making their way into mainstream languages.
Graphics -- Awesome if you have fun with them or work in an industry that uses them.
The mastery of your mother programming language's syntax/semantics/featureset -- #1 thing
The mastery of your base class framework libraries -- #2 thing
Version Control System -- #3 thing (know at least one proficiently)
Unit Testing -- High useful to know and be able to talk about. Most shops will talk about unit testing, only some will actually do it, but very good to know.
XML -- Can learn as you go generally. Not worth independent study.
My additions:
SOAP/JSON: If you do any web or service development, these are huge. Even my desktop development is starting to rely heavily on these two for integration. Great to know for many vocations.
TCP/IP: You should know how a socket works, how to open one, the difference between TCP and UDP. You should be able to send an E-mail address via Telnet or using a simple socket-based environment. Understanding the protocol that underlies so many others is very helpful sometimes.
Your IDE: You will likely spend a ridiculous number of hours in your IDE, and every single one of them has features which can save you lots and lots of time and aggravation. It's worth getting a book just to learn the hidden tricks of your IDE du jour.
In my experience, programmers who are "trying to be good programmers" by learning things like they would learn basic math are never as good as those who program with a purpose.
Just learn what you need to do to accomplish an idea you have; learning any of the points you listed is useless if you're not going to use it.
As an independent contractor I consider the number one skill I have and need is communication. It is absolutely necessary for programmers to understand their clients needs. You can be a guru in SQL, c#, etc but if you don't deliver what client the requires then you are sunk.
That's it. Master that and what language or system you use to solve the problem becomes simply a lesson in learning how it breaks the problem down. There are not "right ways" to master programming skills, there isn't some sort of "golden rule" that will teach you everything in the right order.
In this modern world of ours most of the stuff that once was required (and will still be smacked as the only true knowledge by the old ones) is not required so much today. You don't need to know how the hardware work to still be an excellent programmer.
In my own opinion the only things you need to know in these modern days of ours are:
OO programming.
Unit testing.
Basic Big O notations (when should you use an ArrayList and when should you use an LinkedList?).
Communication. Communication is always needed. Either with the consumer, client or your programmer pals.
Refactoring/Removing smelly code.
Anything else will follow up afterward with practice and experience.
Except Unit testing of the things you mention I would only consider SQL, Concurrency and Version Control System to be useful more than maybe a few times in your career. The rest are just general stuff which can be useful at times though aren't needed.
I don't mean this to be the trite answer it is, but I always wish I could find a programmer who could truly just know both Perl and SQL. I figure with those two knowledge bases, one could nearly grasp anything.
(Edit) Fair enough: perl (IMHO) encapsulates nearly the whole of programming in terms of understanding streams, records, regexp, data transformation, (de)references, both low- and high-level data structures, arrays and associative arrays (hashes). Understanding the language nearly conveys some level of mastery in programming. I know a lot of .NET, PHP and even Java hacks, rare to see a hack that writes Perl.
Add SQL to it (really understanding it, not just simple selects) and I wager that someone who understands these minus fitting the "perl profile" (someone who may have at times their own ill-placed say at things) would be able to quickly and with respectable mastery solve any programming need in the majority of environments.
I guess you've already got your answer by now. I would like to add some more things.
First read some non programming books to develop your interest in programming.
Some good books are
Code complete
The pragmatic programmer
After that think on which field you wanna go. I mean which kinda work you would like to do? Whether you want to be a game developer, a system programmer, a web developer etc.
After that learn some basics of mathematics, learn about data structures and algorithms. Then select a language on which you want to implement those algorithms. You can select C/C++/Java etc according on your interest. Learn the syntax of the language and learn how to implement those algorithms that you've designed.
Some knowledge about Functional programming is also a must have skill. Here's a great article on FP. Click here to see.
I don't think you need to "mastery" all those areas. Just learn some basic concepts and the other stuff [database systems, version controls] will come when you need it...
You have forgotten a lot of important stuff, that really distinguishes the advanced programmer from the novice. (Notice that I have only worked with native Windows development, and has a preference for low-level stuff.)
First, if you work on the Windows platform, you need eventually to master the Windows API, even if you are a Delphi developer, say (and hence can do a lot of things in the VCL alone). You need to learn to work with HWNDs, HBITMAPs, HMENUs and all other kinds of kernel objects.
Also, one very important thing: you need to be able to design and implement custom data structures and algorithms. Every decent programmer should be able to write a syntax-highlighting text editor in a week or so, from scratch. To go even further, I think that a professional programmer really should know how to allocate and use raw memory on the heap manually, in order to store data in some custom structure.
Also, you should be able to understand and design binary file formats. You should be able to write decoders and encoders for simple binary file formats, such as Windows version 3 bitmaps, at least.
Further, if you are working with native development, a good understanding of assembly is a sure sign of maturity as a programmer.
