Reading other people's code is one of the best ways to improve yourself as a programmer. Code reading is a very much under appreciated aspect of software development. Believe me when i say this i have learnt a lot from reading other people's code. As developers we tend to focus our time, energy and resources on how best to write code without giving much thought about how best to read code i strongly believe that code reading is as important a skill as code writing. According to Dave Thomas of the pragmatic programmers the average software developer spends about 40% of the time writing code and 60% reading it.

what libraries/app code have you read recently?

@kodewrita I have just recently started reading RhinoMocks source code. RhinoMocks is an open source library/framework written in c#. It is used for creating dynamic mock and stub objects which are used to aid unit testing of software modules.

You are 100% right. But...it is time consuming. I think for someone who wants to really call themselves a software developer, it is something they should definitely do.

But for dabblers like myself, I only read the bare minimum necessary in order to accomplish whatever task I want to do.

You are right, but let me add this: reading Python code is easy. That's one of the reasons why I picked up Python. You can read through most Python libraries and understand what's up, even if you're new to Python. Reading idiomatic Python code doesn't require any skill at all, because everything just makes sense! Reading Python code is like reading pseudocode, except that you can run it.

Python is easy to read. So is Ruby. PHP can be easy to read also.

But then when you start to take small, each easy to read functions, then start building classes with them, then from those classes build more complicated systems, it sure is nice to be able to catch bugs quickly.

In fact, the easier a language is to write big, complicated systems with, then the more important it is to use testing.

@Seun blehhhhhhhhhh, selling that language again abi. lmao. Cool tho. and the fact that its true is also even more irr-noying.

For me though, reading code especially framework code is an opportunity to see how the really cool programmers do stuff. I learnt how to use PHP magic functions (__call and co) by reading Codeigniter backend codes. And I fell in love with the way Wordpress hooks are implemented ( in fact their own motto is Code is Poetry ), makes you love the Observer pattern.

Man wtf was I writing when I made my post above.

Lol, I thought it was in the other thread. My bad

Lmao....so I guess now, its cool to walk around with a compiler in your head, right Sweet. And I was thinkin that I was the only "sane" person on the planet cos I gat a compiler hooked up to my brain. Hehehehehehehehehehe.

I like to read code because code is good to read. Its a fun and educational experience where you learn a lot about programming, algorithms, idioms and a host of other things. You even learn how to lay code out nicely.

I learn how to use ```````` (not'''''') from PHPmyadmin.
$query=mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(`id`)FROM `members` WHERE `username`='$username'";
And i am learning amazing codes from experts on youtube!

Sorry the above post was by me and I mistakenly posted it in somebody's session(I just helped him register on NL and forgot to sign out.)


I learn how to use ```````` (not'''''') from PHPmyadmin.
$query=mysql_query("SELECT COUNT(`id`)FROM `members` WHERE `username`='$username'";
And i am learning amazing codes from experts on youtube!