You don't internalize what is bad about bad code until you've written a lot of it. I've written all kinds of terrible code, but I had the good fortune of starting early and learning a lot of valuable lessons before I inflicted too much of my bad code on other people.

I think _why had a lot of great ideas about pedagogy, and experimentation is a great way to internalize "best practices" because you truly understand why they are good (not just because somebody else told you so).