Watched a buddy chase the same ghost on a Maytag last month, swapped the control board and the door switch both before he finally stuck a meter on the old switch and found it was dead. Cost him a hundred bucks in parts he ate himself just because the code pointed at the board. Trust the meter, not the screen.

That moment at the library sounds like the same thing that happens when you finally learn to cook instead of just heating up frozen meals. You start to get why butter burns at a certain heat and why salting pasta water matters, and suddenly the boxed stuff tastes flat. Assembly is the recipe behind the recipe. Python hands you the cake and says here you go, but the old guy with the Commodore was showing you the flour and eggs. Most of us just never meet anyone who cooks from scratch anymore.