I think it might have been a cognitive development thing, but at some point in high school, Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" just kinda clicked for me, like I hadn't been reading it properly before.
Reading a small paragraph and then immediately putting it in to action made everything clear far better than books did.
It also shows up in other areas like language learning where some people prefer classes and grammar books, and others prefer to just learn via exposure to a lot of content.
There would be some things books can provide that are probably better than other options, but for a lot of hands on skills it seems best to learn in a hands on way.
Different people learn differently and not everyone needs to type something in to learn it.