I look at it in terms of exposure. I read something and maybe I see something I’ve never seen before. From there I do my research to learn about it. But if not for that first article, I would not have been exposed to it. The only thing worse that not knowing something is not knowing about what you don’t know. I view anything that exposes me to something new as beneficial, now matter how I got there.
I largely taught myself JavaScript by looking at various libraries and frameworks that would employ advanced design patterns that were way over my head. I can still vividly remember the day I first learned about the call and apply methods of functions simply looking through the source code of ExtJS. Did I learn anything from ExtJS about call and apply… no, but it did expose me to them.