D'accord.

One of life's great lessons is knowing when to seek help and advice. IMO, a much more important lesson than anything taught on any CS course.

Another of life's great lessons is learning how to learn, and the greater part of that, is to know how to effectively research a problem.

Many of us didn't have the internet through which to do our research, so we had to use our local library. Just as I would expect any half-competent lecturer to be able to recognise the difference between:

• my have learned something from reading a text.
• my having copied a text verbatim, or with just enough inconsequential changes to try to conceal it's origins.

so I would expect them to be able to recognise when a student has learnt from code found (or solicited) on the internet, and code produced as a result of lessons learnt from stuff found on the internet.

If I, as a lecturer, had any doubts one way or the other, then I don't think I would find it hard to pose one or two simple verbal questions of the student to decide one way or the other.

The last, and possibly most important of life's great lessons involved here is that in the end, if you cheat on exams, it is unlikely to have ill-consequences for either your lecturer, or fellow students in the long term.

Cheating on exams is ultimately, cheating yourself.