Q:

Reading code in repositories to learn good programming practices, is it good or bad?

I am an electrical engineer but I love to code and I managed to learn few languages (and to use them to build useful stuff) and I did it all in my own since I learned coding using tutos and books. 
This is good to have some knowledge of the vocabulary, but not to learn good programming practices.
But thanks to sites like Github, I now have access to a lot of good quality code used to build popular open source software and which is very well commented, as well.
Do you think, as experienced (and, probably, professional) programmers and developers, this is a good way to improve my skills ? 
P.S. : Please do NOT close this question for being debatable because, as far as I am aware of, almost all Human knowledge is debatable. Thanks, again ;)

A:

It will help you to 

read code and understand it more quickly
know more ways to do something

It will not tell you which ways are better and which just look better at first glance.
By all means, continue reading working code. Just remember that you don't know who wrote it or how many times its been patched or how good the patch was or what subtle bugs are still lurking in there.

