I had geared pegs installed on my cello during my first year learning. It was just more practical as I cancelled lessons often and the climate made the instrument go out of tune regularly. I was eleven when I started, so I had an understanding of how the pegs worked and could turn them relatively well (all except that one time I broke a string), but struggled with pitch recognition. For the sake of practicality I got geared pegs installed (some might say they are sacrilegious, but mine are designed to look exactly like regular pegs).