I’ve done something similar lately, partly I started because I don't always have internet. But I also started to see the benefits of using manuals and conjure up things on my own.

It definitely feels harder to do, and doing small tweaks here and there is frustrating as you have to really understand everything. I however find it quite rewarding because I feel I become much more capable as a programmer, and I rely less on third party dependencies for everything. I come up with more original solutions and become more able to combine tools to solve different problems.