[ronaldx]

Absolutely disagree.

I personally learned (as I think many people did) by copying code out of books. Whenever something went wrong, I had to figure out whether it was my typo or the book's typo or my conceptual error or the book's conceptual error. That process helped me to learn a lot, and quickly. If everything went perfect, I got to play some creative game which I loved and gave me a sense of acheivement that helped me to progress.

I no longer do this, because it's not relevant to me at this stage of my learning, but I view that as an important part of my early learning process. If you reflect on your own early learning process, I would be extremely surprised if you didn't copy and paste code. Frankly, you are surely still dependent on other people's code now, you just might call it a 'library' instead.

I agree if you're saying professional developers should avoid copy-paste (there are also legal consequences), but new learners can make great progress by using copy-paste. I would say it's an essential part of studying what other people have done.

[FreeFull]

Do note that there can be a difference between copying code from a book (where you have to read each bit of the code and write it down) and simply hitting ctrl-c ctrl-v, in terms of what you learn.

[redshirtrob]

I think there's a large difference between copy-paste and what you're describing (which I'll dub 'manual transcription'). I have no formal training in learning or cognition, but I do have quite a bit of personal, anecdotal evidence to suggest that manual transcription is far more useful, from a pedagogical standpoint, than straight copy-paste.

Rather than take a boring example from my programming career I'd rather draw from my brief mathematical studies in college. In undergrad I was taking a course on Real Analysis. The course redefined, much more rigorously, certain concepts that I had understood at a much higher level--think the limit, derivatives and the Riemann Integral. Suffice it to say that these new concepts challenged my understanding of introductory Calculus, and when I was tasked with writing proofs based on the underlying concepts (e.g. neighborhoods), I struggled.

In what can only be described as frustration I decided I was going to start copying the proofs over and over. I repeatedly transcribed half a doze proofs for a few days straight (I did each one a few times each night). A strange thing happened. I began to understand the proofs. By that I mean I started to understand the intuition required to make the transition between each step of the proofs. At that point I found the material much more accessible. Reading the book was easier, the lectures made more sense, I could do homework, and consequently I could complete the exams.

I like this example because there is no copy-paste alternative. I had to engage with the material, but I chose to engage at a very mechanical level. Still, there was something about the process of reading and writing that aided in understanding the material.

I don't believe you can get that with copy-paste unless you find some other way to engage with the code.

[ronaldx]

I'm very interested in whether or not manual transcription is pedagogically beneficial.

I personally write a lot. I certainly find it useful to do that.

However, I would not normally recommend Zed Shaw "Learn Code the Hard Way" type of method of writing out over and over again. I think it probably works and you can do it yourself, but I think it's quite inefficient. I don't need to type 10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 more than once to get a good sense of what's going on.

I think you most of all benefit here from the time you're forced to put in. If you can understand nothing, there's really no other sensible thing that allows you to concentrate for the time you need to make decent progress.

However, I don't think this means transcription is pedagogically ideal. IMHO building something for yourself is more effective; getting expert tuition is more effective: in terms of time spent vs benefit received.