Deep practice (or flow) is being in a state where you have some of the skills you need to complete a task, but aspects of the task are just beyond your current skill level. You need to attempt to complete the task, make small failures, learn from them, try again, and repeat this process until you grow the skills required to complete the task. Some research says that being in deep practice for 10,000 hours will take you to the "expert" level. (Or, what I just said defines itself?)
Of course, don't think that sitting in a chair 9 to 5 will give you the experience and education you need to become better than you were the week before. You must be challenged to stretch and grow, and you need some way to learn from failure. Sometimes you can discover why you failed on your own, and sometimes you need some kind of external feedback from a mentor or teacher.
In hacking, you can learn a lot from what others have learned and written about, from other similar problems and solutions, so you can probably consider a site like StackOverflow.com as one potential source of "external" feedback, as long as you understand the solutions you find there (and even better if you discover and solve problems that weren't previously shared.)
Of course, don't think that sitting in a chair 9 to 5 will give you the experience and education you need to become better than you were the week before. You must be challenged to stretch and grow, and you need some way to learn from failure. Sometimes you can discover why you failed on your own, and sometimes you need some kind of external feedback from a mentor or teacher.
In hacking, you can learn a lot from what others have learned and written about, from other similar problems and solutions, so you can probably consider a site like StackOverflow.com as one potential source of "external" feedback, as long as you understand the solutions you find there (and even better if you discover and solve problems that weren't previously shared.)