Before floppies and CDs existed or were viable to distribute with a magazine, computer magazines used to come with giveaway software in the form of source code

Before floppies and CDs existed or were viable to distribute with a magazine, computer magazines used to come with giveaway software in the form of source code printed on a cheap paper booklet. Somewhat similarly to the author, I learned BASIC as a kid mostly by typing in dozens of pages of code from those supplements. Initially I was just drawn to the free software; the laborious typing was just a means to get it. It was when it started failing due to my or the author's typos, rotting tapes and shortage of memory that I had to actually look into the code, look commands up in the user manual (which was otherwise unattractive since it was totally cryptic for a kid), and find practical ways of fixing things, which then led to a desire to learn what was actually going on, and the feeling of "It's not magic; I can do it too". The mere abundance of doing, even of the rote and uninteresting variety, can teach you things in a particular subtle way that's hard to attain otherwise.