Yes actually! Knuth says he got into computer science because he could see that the example programs in the IBM 650 manual were not very good, and he thought "if I, a college student just getting started with computers, can do better than the professionals, then maybe I have some talent for it". Years later, he learned that the programs in the manual were just bad; almost anyone could do better.
There's always someone to defend some of the bad APIs in, say, PHP, so that might be indicative that we could face the issue that being able to tell when some code's bad is already a gated skill, compared to being able to tell that a book is written badly
Definitely interacting with a bad API design is a good way to avoid some pitfalls. Sadly the only way to fully learn all of them is to make an API and then coach people on using it for 10 years.