It is very possible and probably common to go through a major team development effort without spending very much time reading other people’s code. It’s possible to spend an entire career like that. If over 90% of the code you read is your own, how will you learn to be a better programmer?  No matter how many thousands of hours you spend programming, if you are doing only what you already know, you will not improve your skills. You must challenge yourself and sometimes fail to improve.

How can you read other people’s code?

• Read your team members code
• Read (& refactor) your old code – you probably forgot what you did already
• Read books on software & algorithms
• Participate in open source projects
• Read blogs on software
• Write a programming blog