Ironically, as a more experienced programmer, I regret not manually writing every line as I read a book or watched a tutorial, and deliberately do that now. I c

Ironically, as a more experienced programmer, I regret not manually writing every line as I read a book or watched a tutorial, and deliberately do that now. I compare it to thinking I can learn something by listening to a podcast; I can learn about something from a podcast, but to learn it at even a shallow level, I have to have at least more the most shallow interaction with it. Write the code, do it the hard way, then once you've done that, use whatever you want to help you do so more productively. This has coloured my perspective on many things, and has led to me distancing myself from "information" media, because it's often fake learning that costs you the time you could spend actually learning. I don't know where AI sits yet in relation to this, but my sense is that in moments where I'm trying to understand something at a deeper level, it's more fruitful to think about it as hard as possible first for at least a while before looking for the answer. It's not productive in an output per hour sense, but it requires a different intensity of energy that feels like better personal growth.