> The primary emphasis of this article seems to be: "Stop playing with code and start reading books". It's more like "Start reading books about the code you pl

> The primary emphasis of this article seems to be: "Stop playing with code and start reading books". It's more like "Start reading books about the code you play with". Personally, I've always hated when people copy-paste some code without bothering to understand it and I think this is also what the author rants about. By "bothering to understand" I mean read the code author's comments or docs, then read the code and make sure it looks like it actually does what's advertised, modify things you don't like/need, play a bit with things you totally can't understand. Test it before plugging into something bigger and having to debug it then. Or, to use OP,s analogy: Got an appliance? RTFM before you waste few hours using it suboptimally or it cuts your fingers.