A lot of the improvement has come in the last 2 1/2 years that I have been in my current job. I have had a great boss who has really pushed me hard to be better at what I do.
I have picked up skills relating to code generation, project structure, code quality, automatic testing and an ability to break down problems into symbolic algebra.
In part I am in a good place now as I have always been a web programmer and the web space is now the hot place for Applications. HTML 5 makes it very practical to build a very powerful single page application that would have required a stand alone program 3-5 years ago. You will be able to read all about that in the book that I am writing, it will we hope be out in the spring.
And now I need to go work on it. I have to get 2 chapters to my editor by Oct 8 and with the Haggim soon I want to get as much done as I can.