Experience sure means a lot when you're at the eyepiece.

I've been an amateur astronomer for over 50 years, but I'm still learning. 3 years ago I started to get interested in double stars. They were, frankly, one of the few types of objects I could see well from my inner-city home. 2 years ago I started to try to split Castor, the bright star in Gemini. I tried half a dozen times and could not even tell it was supposed to be double, much less see two distinct components.

This year I see the twin stars. Their disks are usually smeared together from bad seeing, but I can detect the components (/r/orlet (no, u/orlet!) thinks I'm a bit foolish to do my astronomy from my balcony where air currents can disrupt things).

The difference is mainly experience - I know now what a close double looks like. Something similar happened to me with Jupiter - after a while I could detect the equatorial belts much better. I think this is a common experience, and I wanted to say that beginners shouldn't get too frustrated.

EDIT: I forgot to mention my equipment! 102mm Orion StarMax Maksutov. 2 years ago I was using an Explore Scientific 82-degree 6.7mm eyepiece that turned out to be too much magnification to be practical with my system. This shouldn't make it harder to use for splitting doubles. My new acquisition is an ES82 8,8mm.