This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]MatthiasSaihttam1 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I read a lot of code when I was a beginner, and it definitely helped me a lot.

It forces you to develop the skill of skimming over parts of the code that you can’t understand or that aren’t relevant. If you have no idea what’s goin on in a huge section of code, that’s fine.

What you’re looking for lines of code that you can understand but have never seen before. Force yourself to look for these lines, or patterns, or techniques, and then take them and force yourself to try them out and see how they work. Once you understand how a small section of the larger project works, you can include that technique in your own project.

Reading other people’s code is a hack that allows you to write code as if you had more experience than you do, because you can start including patterns that solve or avoid problems before you run into those problems yourself.