Many times I get asked by inexperienced developers how they can become better developers. My answer to such question is read other people's code especially code of experienced developers. By developing a habit of reading code you learn a lot about algorithms and programming in general. You even learn how to lay code out nicely. In my opinion reading code is a fun and educational experience. However, code reading like code writing is a skill that must be developed and like anything in life, practice makes perfect. I strongly believe that code reading is as important a skill as code writing.

harryobas:
Many times I get asked by inexperienced developers how they can become better developers. My answer to such question is read other people's code especially code of experienced developers. By developing a habit of reading code you learn a lot about algorithms and programming in general. You even learn how to lay code out nicely. In my opinion reading code is a fun and educational experience. However, code reading like code writing is a skill that must be developed and like anything in life, practice makes perfect. I strongly believe that code reading is as important a skill as code writing.

Its a must-have skill, now that commercial scripts are flooding everywhere. If you cant read it, then you cant tweak it.