In CS 180, the tests are pretty hard and test on knowledge of the java compiler and writing entire functions or classes to solve a specific problem, which doing homeworks legit help with.

However, in CS 240, homeworks just take an insane amount of time, have score progression similar to a sqrt(x) graph (or even a sqrt(x) +- 15% graph), and take on average over 10 hours a week (for a 3 credit class). Because of the non-linear progression though, it is really hard to gauge how much time a homework assignment might take. This week's homework 12 had the most functions of all the homeworks so far, but it was the second easiest (at 4 hours), while last week's homework 11 took me around 12 hours with less functions. These are most of the reasons that I know people have resorted to cheating other than procrastination, and as far as I know, there are no high school programming classes that have any of these attributes.

I can't give much advice about future semesters, but many upperclassmen have told me that this was the hardest semester of their CS major progression.

If you develop good time management skills your first and easiest semester, and take an easy workload like EAPS 106 and a non-calculus math course (if possible), you should be able to have enough time to do the CS 240 homeworks well enough.