There are many reasons why you should never cheat while learning programming. Cheating can lead to frustration, decreased motivation, and even failure.
Wasted effort
When you cheat, you are not really learning the material. You might be able to get by for a little while, but eventually you will get stuck. And when you do, you will have no idea how to fix the problem because you didn’t learn the concepts in the first place.
Frustration
In addition, cheating can lead to frustration. If you’re constantly having to look up answers or copy code, you’re not going to enjoy the learning process. You’ll likely get discouraged and give up.
Failure
Finally, cheating can lead to failure. If you’re relying on someone else’s code or knowledge, you’re not going to be able to apply what you’ve learned in a real-world setting. You might be able to get away with it in school, but in the real world, employers are looking for people who know how to solve problems on their own.
So, why should you never cheat while learning programming? Because it’s not effective and it can lead to some serious consequences. Stick to honest hard work and you’ll be successful in the long run.
How not to cheat (real world examples)
Do you remember, that in one of the first lectures of my Full Stack JavaScript course, I told you about the binary search algorithm?
This is one of the classic algorithms. You can find its JavaScript implementation on the Internet in about 5 seconds. It might take you another 10 seconds to check the functionality of your code and send the task for verification. But this is the road to nowhere.
Solving tough problems on your own, you improve your skills. Maybe some problems will take a full day to crack. With the other ones, you might struggle for weeks. But the skills you learn in the process will stay with you for life.
Copying someone else’s code, you may get a moment’s pleasure from the “green checkmarks”, but they will not bring you any benefit. You can tell yourself as much as you like that you “would have figured it out anyway”, or “analyzed the code in detail and understood it well”, but this is all self-deception.
You can think of your brain as a muscle and CoderslangJS as a gym.
You can ask for advice if you feel you don’t understand how to do a certain exercise. The gym is full of people that are ready to help. Or you might want to sit back, relax for a while and just chit-chat with someone about life.
But asking someone to lift the barbell for you? This is nonsense. Exactly the same nonsense as copying someone else’s code and rejoicing at the “solved” task.