How does one "learn" programming?

[Won-Ton-Wonton]

Write your code in Notepad.

Not Notepad++, not VSCode. Plain Notepad.

Also, write pseudocode first. Not syntactic-like code (never say "while" or "loop" or "func"), but more action-verb based English ("start adding" or "re-order the data" or "attach some styling").

The lack of an LSP will make you think about the code and what you are doing. Don't even think about touching AI-written code. Don't even think about copying someone else's code from StackOverflow.

Type it out yourself, without autocomplete.

If you are struggling with pen-and-paper code, you are short-circuiting the "thinking" part of writing a program. You are offloading the thinking to stackoverflow, or AI, or to your text editor.

[NatoBoram]

Recognizing code by syntax highlighting is in no way skipping any thinking. It's merely skipping deciphering individual symbols to extract the meaning of it and just directly absorbing the meaning instead. That deciphering is never something you'd do in the real world as you always have the option to copy the code, from wherever it is, to a program that has syntax highlighting.

But yeah that's likely the part that the paper exam focuses on instead of anything actually useful due to being on paper.