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Interesting. I would have given the same answer some time ago, yet lately I have the feeling that I learn more from installing, configure and dive into somebody else' code and extend / change it than writing something from scratch. I guess both are valid 'methods' to learn, although the latter benefits open source projects like laconi.ca as well.

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I personally think that both are valid methods to learn, but that you learn different things from going the separate ways. i.e. when I'm writing something from scratch I have to learn every little detail of what I'm trying to do, whereas taking a look at someone else's code I could gloss over a lot of the implementation details but learn how the author decided to implement some of the relevant/important parts, how to extend, and otherwise generally contribute to a project.

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