Nice writeup.

I find the fifth point to be the most important of all when you're beyond your first novice steps. Understanding and knowing how to apply certain patterns/structures etc. and knowing when the situation is right to apply them is more crucial than being able to dream up the correct syntax for a language or code quickly. While you're at it looking at design patterns also have a look at anti-patterns.

Another topic I'd like to add here is invest a good chunk of time into test driven development. Knowing what previous part of code you've written breaks because you've created a test for it saves you a lot of time. Not only that but it can also give you some confidence that what you're building is the right thing and that it performs as you're expecting.