I don't know if I would have made it past the first few hurdles without the Internet. I am self-taught, so the first years were doing as much searching (pre-google, I used Usenet a lot I think), as much as checking books out of the library and typing in the code by hand. Doesn't having access to an ever-growing library of code, some functional, some not, ultimately make us all more productive? Having said that, I do agree completely that you need to get a full understanding of what the code does: read and type, don't copy.