I have been trying to complete my javascript certification for a long time now, and when I was on the ending phase, I was stuck very badly on this last project question(cash register). I tried solving the question without and then with the hints provided but still wasn’t able to pass all test cases. What I did was that I gave up and tried to understand the solution code by author and then completely wrote that on my own. However, I will continuously try to find a completely different way of my own for that question, I wanted to ask that will this be counted as Plagiarism? And should I still not claim for the certificate? P. S. - This was almost the first question in this certification in which I was feeling helpless without the help of the hints and author’s description to the solution of the question
freeCodeCamp contains about 350,000 active users per month.
If only 0.1% of users tried to cheat their way through the entire course for the certificate, then that would be 350 users. Chances are at least 1% of users have copied at least one or more solutions as their own, which would bring it up to 3500 people per month.
With these statistics, their is a next to no chance you would have ever get caught. In fact, their is almost no one checking the projects to make sure they are not copied. Anyone could go online not to just FCC, but any free course and try and cheat it for the certificate. Any developer or moderator at any coding course knows this. But they also know that full cheaters will not gain any knowledge and will go nowhere with it.
With your post and this information in mind, I would not really be that worried. I would suggest asking on the forums and then just finding your own solution to the cash register. Then you can claim the certificate with not just academic honesty, but the irreplaceable knowledge. If you get into a habit of plagiarizing the correct answers then you will reach a roadblock of not knowing how to do to something.
No one is going to block your certificate over this. Trust me, as stated before, their is plenty of people trying to cheat this and many other free courses. I also do not think you are a cheater anyways, just that you made a small mistake and are asking for help to fix it. Your are asking about academic dishonesty on a potentially anonymous course that some others cheat. That is something to be proud of and shows you value your education. My goal of this was not to prompt you to try and get away with more cheating because it is easy, but rather to show you that you are not as bad as you think.
We all make mistakes including cheating, it is just how you own up to it which is what matters.
I woke up and saw the notification about your answer and seriously, this made my day. Thank you so much. This not just made me positive towards myself, but also going to lead me to go through the question again as soon as possible and complete that myself, for the certification. Thank you for this completely appropriate and perfect answer!!
Happy to help.
Trust me, you are not alone. It seems like everyday I see a new post weather it is here or Harvards online CS50 program asking about the same thing. People cheated either a project or part of it, and are concerned about the outcome.
We all make mistakes. Happy coding 