[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.