Well, first of all I'm not mad at you because you responded. I will be 60 years old come this october, "Just that I think having a machine statistically spit out answers for you is cheating." And back in my day at school using a calculator was cheating. But now they are required like that dumb protractor parent's hve to buy off of the school list of supplies needed. I mean, no course at school ever required me to pull out a protractor, yet there it was collecting dust in my desk, year after year.
Anyway's, having a friend improve something you do Is learning. You don't go to a new job green as hell, and they show you what you need to do, and help you get batter at it. That's learning. I mean, reading a book is learning. By your logic, it's like someone should just become a great coder because they wanted to without any references on how to start or get to where they would like in their skills. If i did not know how to make a fire, and someone tossed me into a cold chamber with two sticks to rub together, some wood and tinder and ten slammed a door on me and said "figure it out on your own!", Well, then you better bet that I would call a friend and ask them to teach me how to make that fire with the supplies I was given. And if a friend could not be reached, I would google it or simply ask DeepSeek for a more personal approach. I do not consider asking for help on something from In any approach I use to learn how to do a thing does not make it cheating.
Every bit of code deep, ( i call em deep.. ) makes I had to ajust and find work arounds. And if something bombed or caused an error, I would tell deep about it, and it typically apologizes for something and spits out newer code to fix the mistake. I ajust it, find what works, and when that collaberation seems to fit, I upload the final code back to deep and ask "can you make this more effiecnt?" and if it can, it will show me the final updated code.
If it's 2am in the morning and I have an Issue with a piece of code I wrote or need a new angle on how to approach something, I won't bother calling a friend to wake them and ask for help. Instead I use deep. And I learn how to do things from the responses it makes.
Well.. that's my point of view. Learn from an employer how to do a job, learn from a friend how to improve something, learn from a book or even learn from AI, none of it is cheating. imo.