I had that experience. We were an apple2 middle school and a bunch of us would stay after and work in the computer lab. I wrote a little game in low res graphics. We'd trade tips. Lamentably the teachers weren't much help. We'd ask the music teacher who would be in there sometimes as he seemed to have some good knowledge ("music and the apple 2 wasn't easy.. you could "click the speaker" and by doing so rapidly you could get tones..)

We had access to "Nibble" magazine which had a lot of printed code. I got my "sound" routines from that. Between that and "Beagle Bros." programs. It was fun. We never figured out machine code...We got the basics, but it was just too much.

Though we just had each other as our lab wasn't internet enabled (as was the style in the early 80s)