Nobody ever became a great writer by reading a dictionary (tommy.authpad.com)

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.

Noah Webster did.

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.