> you can't just view source and copy paste

My highschool computer curriculum was basically a hacker school program for web dev stretched across three years (senior year we did VB6). I managed to be impressive because I would dissect web pages to learn their tricks. I think I must be the only one (or if not, at least among the first) in our level to pull off columned layout without CSS. I figured out <table border="0"></table> all by myself, neither the books nor the teachers taught you that. And I did that by reading source code on IE5---developer tools weren't a thing then!

In our second year, one of the exercises was to recreate Yahoo's log-in page. I got closest exactly because of the above. I still feel smug remembering this.

Golden times, indeed. :)