When I took my first calculus class, in the 1980s, we spent the first few weeks of the course just computing limits. No reason was given, and no context, just t

When I took my first calculus class, in the 1980s, we spent the first few weeks of the course just computing limits. No reason was given, and no context, just techniques. I remember having to compute the limit of 2x+1 as x goes to 3 by writing it as the limit of 2x + the limit of 1, and then saying the first limit is 2 times the limit of x, and so on. Utterly boring, especially when the teacher couldn't even answer us when we asked "if we already know we'll get 7 by setting x to 3, why do we have to write all this?" The whole thing almost put me off math. There's a time and place to introduce properties of limits, but the first month of calculus 1 isn't it.