Well, the inventory of primitives has to be earned. Else they can't actually be composed. Composition requires tacit knowledge. There's a learning pyramid thing that describes it. Just asked chatGPT to jog my memory (heh, heh)

    Remember → Understand → Apply → Analyze → Evaluate → Create

citation: see "Bloom's Taxonomy"

Discussions on learning typically bring up the need for rote learning, repetition and vocabulary building. It is essential, but to focus on it "as the mechanism for learning" does more harm than good. It's necessary but in no way sufficient.