How to become an expert progamer

Aspiring young computer programmer here.  Requesting a list of things that every young programmer should know and begin working on.  I want to become an expert like you guys, so anything will be helpful.  Maybe let me know what the best text editor is, what languages are the best, what is the best language to learn first, and what some good starter projects are.  Should I learn by reading or by doing?  What are some thing that I'm not likely to learn for awhile that you have learned through your experience?

Thank you. 

- Shawn Michaels

>>1

An actual hint:
Conway's Game of Life is a pretty good beginner project as it's rather neat in its finished state.
Also stuff like a decimal number -> roman numbers converter would be pretty cool. Oh and maybe like a really simple server that connects to a client and echoes what they input as a haiku (3 lines, don't count syllables).