

Nobody ever became a great writer by reading a dictionary - tomasien
http://tommy.authpad.com/don-t-copy-and-paste-other-people-s-code-write-it-out

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johnpaulhayes
I think the most important part of this post was " it’s that not knowing where
to start is incredibly intimidating"

I am seeing this today in my current job. I gave a young intern a task to do
and 40 minutes later I asked him how was he doing. He responded with a bemused
look - "I dont know where to start" My advice was was to think about the task
and just start. Start regardless and don't think if its a bad start or not as
it will be improved.

~~~
tomasien
Agreed, I still find myself in that position a lot.

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lsiebert
My takeaway is that people copy code and implement it without understanding
it, and that retyping it can be a way to learn what one is doing. It actually
makes me wonder if splitting a program into lines and reading it line by line
with the previous and next lines not showing might be another shortcut.

I notice that with big chunks of code, my eyes do tend to glaze over. I expect
typing the text helps one chunk it into meaningful segments.

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lutusp
Noah Webster did.

