Writing good code is a craft that takes a lifetime to master. I've been coding for about 30 years now (gulp), and I think that I've only just reached an acceptable level. A lot of published code (and a fair amount of production code) is rubbish, and sets a bad example.

Being able to tell good code from bad is a really important milestone, because then you can stop picking up bad habits. Once you know what you are doing, it's probably better to code stuff yourself, and sample code can just be used to fill in gaps in the documentation.

If it were easy, anyone could do it!