You won't figure out how to program unless you'll face a real task. No theory would ever replace a simple real-world task. Before starting working on r-w scenarios, I was naively reading lot's of books, with all examples, but when I faced a real problem, I just couldn't gather all my theoretical knowledge to complete the task. If you are starter, I'd recommend you to get the tasks from anywhere you can. Do not think they're useless unless you've solved them. As a first step try solving data structure problems, such as sorting a linked list, performing DFS, BFS on trees, graphs, etc. Not only will it improve your coding skills, but what's more important, it will improve your analytical and algo skills, which trust me is a valuable knowledge. Then, when you will know that you can rock with pointers, recursion, references, etc, try implementing a simple linear equation solver or something like that.

Bottom line. It's all about practice. Just keep digging and code, code, code.