Do You Eat and Run?
Are you the type of designer/developer who eats and runs? I don’t mean going to a party, chowing down, and then taking off as you just went there for the feast. I’m talking about the type of designer/developer who cruises around the blogsphere finding what they want, copy + paste, then get’n the hell out.
Although there is nothing wrong with this since most bloggers who share their techniques and code are giving back to better the community, you may be cheating your self out of a good lesson.
What are you missing out on?
When you blindly copy and paste, you are failing to see the value of what the blogger was teaching you in his/her article. If they wanted you to just copy + paste, they would of just given you a download link and call it a day, but why do they write such detailed tutorials?
Often times designers / developers who feast on code without understanding it will build their talent on a weak foundation. Having solid understanding of why and how things work, gives you the tools when you really want to create something unique and custom. I read a great article recently from Web DesignerDepot.com about Direct vs. Indirect Sources of Inspiration Which is similar to what I am trying to point out here.
When you take code blindly, you will only be able to duplicate THAT technique or THAT style, what you should be doing is figuring out the logic and concept, so you can build off of the tutorial into something more.
To be great at what you do, you have to go beyond what is provided for you. Don’t rely on being spoon-fed, but take that extra step to really understand the core concept.
Conclusion
Next time you run up on a nice tutorial, build it from scratch, dissect it, rip it apart and put it back together. By the time you are done with that technique, you should be very comfortable with what you just created. Your creativity from here will be your lead.
We are all students of this ever-changing web environment, so learning and bettering yourself is key to staying afloat. Don’t be lazy and fall behind, learn as much as you can!
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Author Bio
My name is Soh Tanaka and I am a Los Angeles based designer/front-end developer specializing in CSS driven web design with an emphasis on usability and search engine optimization. I also run a CSS Gallery which is updated daily with the best CSS websites from around the world. Come check it out!
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+ Add Comment20 Peeps Have Spoken Their Minds...
Very good call. When I started programming 5 years ago i did just that. When anything was outside of the norm i was lost. I had to go back and repeat much of my learning to be where I am at now.
Great post Soh! So good I read half of it then copy-pasted it.
Im with Curits on this one. This was my bad habbit before but now I am going the legit way. Good reminder.
The people who probably need to read this probably won’t land on this article because they only seek the resource and tutorial posts. But what the heck, that’s their loss!
Great post soh!!
Thx
I always read the comments after reading a tutorial to check the guy’s feedback. Sometimes comments contain modification and enhancement to the original code the writer didn’t think about.
I also try to participate in discussion and digging more into how actually the things work :)
Hey this is a great article. I will be graduating this year and I am just getting my feet wet with all of the tutorials out there. I will definitely keep this in mind on my journey. Thank you very much.
Great advice, Copy and Paste make a person learn nothing.
What about coders who work as hired code monkey? They don’t have time in their workflow to read more than 2-3 articles per day. And after 10-hour day of work – last thing they want to do is go back to work (mentally).
@Smooth, coding may be work, but it’s never not fun. :D
Thanks for pointing me to that article, it was really good,
I feel guilty about doing this. Not the copy & paste part, but I do find myself excited to find a new article, but I end up scanning over it. A lot of the time I try to run through the process in my head, but I know it’s better to actually do it to feel it out.
I gotta get a bit more organized :)
Cheers, Soh! Very inspiring and encouraging post. Thanks for all your other posts, as well!
this is really good article…thank you
Amen!!! I was a teacher for years in a web program at te college level, and it always amazed me how many students would just copy and paste without actualy trying to learn anything from the lesson…
Even now, I come across so many sites that have just pasted together a bunch of tutorials they’ve found online and call themselves a web company…
Hopefully articles like this will eventually sink in.
Goo post!
Reading, dissecting, tinkering and recreating is the only way to learn. Those who seek to just have everything given to them on a plate will never progress!
There will always be people to copy/paste, but, like you said, it only gets you so far. At some point, if you want to keep going forward and actually innovate, you need to understand every bit of code in order to customize or debug it.
Actually thats the point to became a good programmer. Thanks for the article.
Really simple and inspiring post. Some of technologies i worked have limited documentation or help compare to other technologies and therefore the only way out is to follow what you mentioned in the post.
nice article and nice “speak box” too :)
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