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Here’s one of my key, secret techniques for learning code:
I type in example code by hand.
It turns out there’s magic that happens between reading source code from a book, manual, or web page then typing it into your own program. I don’t know what it is, but I do know it works. You will learn faster when you type source code in by hand.
I do NOT download source code.
Also, copying and pasting can result in improper characters being copied. The most infamous example is probably the tab -> space conversion with Makefiles.
In HTML, quote characters are often mis-pasted. The pretty “smart quotes” you see in this article are not the quotes I typed into the editor when writing the article. WordPress substitutes smart quotes on the fly, when serving pages. If you copied these quotes, what you pasted into a source code editor would likely be the unicode characters you see on the screen, and not what I typed at the keyboard (and what you need in your code).
Don’t download, or cut-and-paste. Punch that code in by hand!
[...] functions you want on your final page, circle those in blue pencil. Once you have it figured out, type it all in by hand. Actually, I just cut-n-paste, but I’m lazy and I’ve been programming long enough to [...]