> * find better programs and copy but never paste, as a beginner always key-in your programs This is a surprisingly valuable tip. By manually typing in the cod

> * find better programs and copy but never paste, as a beginner always key-in your programs This is a surprisingly valuable tip. By manually typing in the code instead of just using copy/paste, you have the opportunity to make typing errors, causing programming problems you then have to debug. It forces you to dig into things in order to figure out what's going on and fix it. Bonus points if you change some minor aspect of the code while you're typing it in. Change variable names, maybe genericize it a little. Something that theoretically shouldn't make any difference. The problems will be worse, forcing you to dig in even more to fix them. I've learned so much this way over the years. YMMV, of course.