There are cases where hours' worth of banging your head on a specific implementation won't give you the insight you could glean from minutes' worth of reading a

There are cases where hours' worth of banging your head on a specific implementation won't give you the insight you could glean from minutes' worth of reading a good paper. - Understanding the practical characteristics of a data structure. - Understanding the practical characteristics of an algorithm. - Understanding the principles and motivation behind a design pattern. - Understanding the principles and motivation behind an architectural paradigm. Someone who thinks they can learn all they need to know about such topics by looking at source code isn't going to hit their career's apogee much past the "code monkey" mark.