I'm certainly not a veteran yet, but I'm about half way into my mighty rookie to geek morph, and just about every key concept I've learned, has come from hours upon hours of debugging, figuring what the $#!& I could've done wrong this time...oh and by RTFM....over and over again....that and resisting the ever so attractive impulse of throwing the monitor out the window, and debugging it just one more time.....

...and, of course, after all previous efforts, finally posting a question you know is worth while, just to find out you missed the two word answer on page one of the "friendly" manual. Thankfully all these wonderful monks took pity on my exasperation and always gently nudged me in the right direction....;)