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Nothing beats manually copying hundreds of lines of b&w code from a book and missing some syntax and having no idea why.

Actually, punch cards beat this.

> Nothing beats manually copying hundreds of lines of b&w code from a book and missing some syntax and having no idea why.

That's why Neil J. Rubenking's and Jim Seymour's stuff in PC Magazine had checksums at the end of each line you typed in. Those were the days.

I had the worst of both worlds in the late 2000s when I was trying to learn on my own.

There were printed books where the code didn't work. There were also message board posts that described my exact problem. The only response would be from the OP himself, usually a "never mind, figured it out" thing, with no further details given.

You were lucky if you didn't have to learn a whole 'nother language first too, just saying. :-)