These are all great points, and I'm realising now I have missed the point a little. Reading arbitrary code is good, because you learn something regardless of wh

These are all great points, and I'm realising now I have missed the point a little. Reading arbitrary code is good, because you learn something regardless of whether the code is "good" or "bad" -- you learn how to understand more styles of code, and which patterns tend to be easy to understand and which tend to be hard. I guess the part that was tripping me up is that you shouldn't necessarily try to emulate all code you read.