You're overlooking a few things: - we're not all dealing with code written by people who haven't read these papers - in the real world, other people are also

You're overlooking a few things: - we're not all dealing with code written by people who haven't read these papers - in the real world, other people are also dealing with your code and the better it is, the easier it is for them, which in turn makes things easier for you - people that have read these papers are often in a position to teach others, so the future code of those taught will be better. I will definitely relay what I learn from a paper to my colleagues when applicable - sometimes somebody that has read a paper is needed to solve the mess the others have created: a mess that is impossible to solve without reinventing what is stated in the appropriate paper. And even though it seems obvious after reading the paper, you wouldn't come up with it yourself. - there are things to be learned from the thorough analysis of others that you wouldn't ever have dreamed up yourself. - there are things to be learned from the thorough analysis of other that you wouldn't ever learn if all you've been doing is reading code by others that haven't read these papers. And even if you read code from people that have read the papers: understanding something from code is much harder than understanding them from a paper in which they are clearly expositioned. You wouldn't grasp the fundamentals behind Lamport's paper or the Dynamo paper nearly as fast.