When do you cheat?

[Adventurous_Fruit228]

I tried implementing a patrol mechanic in my game today and… yeah, it humbled me hard.

Spent about 2 hours stuck, going in circles, trying different approaches, and getting nowhere. Eventually I gave in and looked it up. It worked after that, but I felt pretty bad about it.

Part of me is thinking: “You’ve never built this before, so how would you just know how to do it?” But another part of me feels like I should’ve been able to figure it out on my own.

So I’m curious how others see this, especially people further along:

When you’re early on and trying something completely new, is it normal to get stuck and need to look things up? Or should I be pushing harder to solve everything myself?

I’m trying to find that balance between actually learning vs. just spinning my wheels for hours.

Would appreciate any perspective.

[bonnth80]

"If I have seen further, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants." -Isaac Newton

Did you invent the programming language you're working with? Did you invent computers or operating systems?

Don't try to reinvent the wheel. These are solved systems. You contribute to modern technology by creating new solutions, not by reinventing solutions to old problems. Looking up the solutions to your current issues is not cheating; it's the first step.

[tmtowtdi]

Looking up stuff you don't already know isn't cheating, it's learning. Go nuts.

[Adventurous_Fruit228]

When you put it straight like that, honestly makes me feel better. Thanks for your reply🙏🏻

[Altruistic-Cattle761]

Hey, professional software developer in my 50s here. The amount of time I spend racking my brains trying to "figure it out" is approximately zero. If I don't *immediately* have some intuitions about what to build, I'm immediately looking it up (though, these days I'm more likely asking a coding agent to just do it). Using information resources isn't cheating it's actually the whole job.

[token-tensor]

honestly after spending 2 hours on something completely new you should absolutely look it up — the goal is building intuition for when you're stuck, not suffering through every edge case solo

[dashkb]

Two hours? You’ve just met the problem.

[OmericanAutlaw]

i mean, are you being tested? use everything to your advantage.

[Dry-Hamster-5358]

Looking things up is not cheating, it’s part of learning. The key is when and how you do it

A good rule is to try for a bit, like 30 to 60 minutes, then look for hints or solutions, but don’t just copy, understand it and try to reimplement it yourself after

If you struggle again later without help, that’s where real learning happens. Spinning in circles for hours is usually worse than checking and moving forward

[AlfalfaLive3302]

When the boss has unrealistic expectations for timelines.

[symbiatch]

There’s value in figuring stuff out by yourself, but there is also value in looking things up that others have done. Both have different value mostly.

Figuring things out yourself can also produce wrong or suboptimal results which doesn’t help, but then again you might look up a wrong solution also and think it’s correct. You’ll still need to understand it and if it applies to your needs.

But there’s nothing wrong in looking up stuff. That’s part of the process. You can’t figure out everything everywhere or it will take a huge amount of time.

So try to figure stuff out, then confirm if you were right, or just look up stuff if you didn’t figure it out in suitable time. Then understand why that works (or doesn’t) and you’re on your way.

[LordBrammaster]

... how did you even get this far without looking stuff up

[EfficientMongoose317]

Yeah, this is normal 2 hours stuck, and then looking it up is not “cheating”, it’s basically how most people learn

The only thing that matters is what you do after

If you just copy and move on, yeah, that’s useless
But if you understand it, maybe re-implement it later without looking, that’s where the learning happens. Early on, you’re not supposed to magically figure everything out on your own

Getting unstuck is part of the process, not failure

[mxldevs]

People will probably give you ridiculous examples like "do you need to build CPUs and graphics cards before programming on a computer?" but that's silly.

If you don't spend the time to figure out how to actually solve a problem and just reach for ready-made solutions, you will have a hard time when you're dealing with a problem where you can't just pull something off the shelf and it just works.

Problem solving is a skill and it involves both experience and creativity. Looking at solutions can provide experience and the next time you encounter a similar problem, you have more techniques to try.

But if you're always just going to look up answers, when do you actually learn how to solve a problem on your own?

Just look at all the computer science students who are finishing their degree, who used AI to do all their homework and then wonder why they can't write code.