[omegalulw]

> I think there is a lot of value to looking at a SO answer, generalizing it and making it work in your code and doing it quickly.

This will probably get downvoted but I disagree with this.

IMO you should never be "generalizing" random pieces of code. What you should rather look for is help in augmenting your own logical reasoning process: e.g., I want to transform X to Y with BigO of Z complexity, how do I do that? Look for stuff that helps you understand how to do this. Once you do, you shouldn't need to generalize other people's code.

I don't mean to say that you should reinvent the wheel. Rather, you should understand that you need a wheel to solve your problem - where you get the wheel from isn't really that relevant (except for copyright, licenses etc but that's a separate topic).