I'm certainly not a great coder, but I am familiar with several languages and get the gist of it. An expert coder would surely call any code I write sloppy, inefficient, etc., but I'm of the feeling that if it works and doesn't suck up resources, then it's fine. Having said that, I too feel I have learned much more just by studying others' code than through books/tutorials. I'm not knocking all tutorials, but most just seem to not get the point across in their writing or simply lose the reader's interest. Modeling tutorials, on the other hand, are great, especially with video being so common. I'm no artist but have learned tons about Blender on YouTube these past several months. They have really taken a lot of the mystery out of that program for me. Unfamilia's tutorials are fantastic and there are many others on the Tube.
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