> For example, to add pagination to this website, I would read the Jekyll docs, find the right plugin to install, read the sample config, and make the change. Possibly this wouldn’t work, in which case I would Google it, read more, try more stuff, retest, etc. In this process it was hard not to learn things.

How is this any different than building Ikea furniture? If I build my "Minska" cupboard using the step-by-step manual, did I learn something profound?

If you've never put a cupboard together, you would have learned what the different parts, what size of screws to use (in the rough sense),... You may have forget it right after, but when someone ask you to help them, you will be a bit more proficient than someone with no experience.

But the nice thing about a cupboard and its components is that they are real objects, so the remembrance is done with the whole body (like the feeling of a screw not correctly inserted). Software development is 90% a mental activity.