Don't know.

All I know is that I suck at calculus but I write good code.
Weird.

If I would have to decide, early on I wrote random stuff 'til it worked.
Then I attempted to comprehend what I just did and started reading books.

That's probably when I first understood what I was doing.

1 Monkey on 1 Typewriter producing infinite random strings. That you will type a Java program eventually is a mathematical certainty. What about the perl programs you wrote before that?

@p100sch never used perl.

@Ranchonyx Perl can look like a random string after enough obfuscation.

@Ranchonyx here an example from https://perl.plover.com/obfuscated/ :
@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";sub p{ @p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*=2)+=$f=!fork;map{$P=$P[$f^ord ($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^[P.]/&& close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&<$_>}%p;$_=$d[$q];sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print

@p100sch what in the everloving fuck

@Ranchu It prints hello world I think.