Should I be using libraries if I'm trying to learn how to program?

Posted by CodeJustin.com on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by CodeJustin.com
Published on 2009-08-10T03:15:08Z Indexed on 2010/05/29 21:02 UTC
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I have been programming "a lot" in the past few months and at first I was trying to find the "easyest" language. Fortunately I realized that it's not about the language, it's about learning HOW to code. I ran into the Stanford lectures online (programming methodology) and I watched them all (around 23 hours total) awhile ago. Then I got into Java ME and programmed about 28.47% of a mobile RPG game (only around 2k lines of code). I feel like I learned a lot from those two experiences compared to previous ones but now that I'm moving into flash/actionscript 3.0 development and I'm finding myself learning like I did when I first started with PHP. I'm not really getting whats under the hood kind of. I'm finding myself using libraries to speed up development time which doesn't seem like a bad thing BUT I personally do not know how to write the libraries myself off hand.

So should I be coding everything myself or is it ok to use libraries when you don't even know how to code them?

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