Become a better programmer with programming challenges
I agree with several already-existing comments that programming challenges do not help you become a better programmer (assuming that you're hireable in the first place).<p>I will note, however, that they DO HELP with interviewing.  The skillset is quite overlapping... artificial time-pressure, artificially contrived problems, cleverness is rewarded, etc.  (But it's not entirely the same, because programming contests don't give points for half-working answers).<p>Also, IMO the best coding contest site is <a href="http://code.google.com/codejam/" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/codejam/</a>, because:<p>1) GCJ has unusually clear problem statements.  UVa in particular is terrible for this.<p>2) GCJ supports EVERY programming language (unlike all others I know of except Project Euler)