You never thought plagiarism also exists in coding? You are wrong

Just like text files, art works, stealing another person's work or idea is also sanctioned in coding.

Plagiarism means using someone else's work without permission from or credits to the original owner. It is known to be one of the most abhorrent misuse of public property. Engaging in this basically portrays lack of appreciation to creativity and not even regarding the mental efforts the original owner had put in.

Plagiarism can be found in arts, literature, even in technology, and basically in anything that involves creativity.

Relating to coding, plagiarism is seen as copying another person's code or solution, and taking it as yours without the owner's authorization.

Use of external references and source codes are the major opportunistic causes of plagiarism in coding because the process often inadvertently bring up chances of copying.

Plagiarism is mostly looked out for and penalized in Computer Science Classes where students are not allowed to copy and steal from external sources or from each other.

The aim of study is to develop the students' mental ability not otherwise. Therefore, cases of plagiarism is treated justly.

Meanwhile, in non-school setting, reference to free sources like stack overflow, is allowed while coding at work or just on your own (Stress on "FREE SOURCES").

Even for developers, there are Non-free sources and Copying someone's ideas without proper citation or approval from the person is theft.

For Non-free sources, You can avoid code plagiarism by;

1.Obeying the terms and conditions:

Be sure about the condition involved before using a code that you found on internet or public repositories.

It all depends on the author's choice, either you are free use their code without any conditions or free to use but with conditions like giving them enough attributions in your work or paying before using their codes.

Also, there are vast number of libraries and communities on the internet dedicated to helping newbies by providing free-to-use codes. So, you may not want to stick to that one that gives unbearable conditions before using their codes.

2.Record Your References:

You can give citation in codes by commenting the source in the main file. Like adding a comment beside the copied line of codes.

3.Try on Your Own:

What makes developer if not ability to solve problems. Allow your mind to be creative and try rectifying errors without help. Then, if you eventually get stuck, you can now refer to those external sources. Most importantly, as you copy the codes, make sure to understand the logic behind.

Students who don't want to get sanctioned in school due to plagiarism should try coding on their own and can use plagiarism checkers like Codequiry

Noteworthy; public open source libraries like jQuery, have no issues with plagiarism. Which means you are free to refer to them anytime and copy solution codes.

You can also find help through other free sources like D3.js, Pandas, Three.js or even Stack Overflow