I have worked with people who get a training example code and apply it to a dataset. And few weeks later they were still pulling off their hair because the model wasn't working in production but they have such a great results in their test. I took a look to their way of doing the training and I could point to so many errors they were doing why the model will never work in production.
That is not cutting edge, but at some point there is a new model that works better, and you should understand why in order to improve you current model. So probably you will have to read the paper and understand it.