He did learn a hard lesson, but it sounds like this was exactly what he was attempting to rectify. "This project is pretty important to me. I should probably figure out how to use source control and put it on GitHub" but then by doing so, and due to some arguably poor UX decisions in VSC, destroyed the project.

If someone's trying to learn how to do something you can't just be like "well you should've already known how", you know what I mean?

Well actually, let's qualify that: there are cases where people try to jump right in the deep end. "I'm just learning woodworking! Step 1: build a new deck for my house", like yeah bro what are you doing, let's start with a birdfeeder or something.

But that's not what happened here. He tried to use the built-in GUI, which many would assume would be easier to learn than jumping right to the CLI, and it burned him in a way he didn't even realize was possible.