Frankenstein coding

These days, you can program and create real life applications via a Frankenstein approach.

1. Start with a tutorial that creates a basic "Hello World" application.
2. Think of a feature to add. 
3. Google "How do I do 'X' in 'Y'?
4. Cut and paste found code into your app.

Over time, you will eventually assemble an unique application that is a collection of copied bits.

Is it wrong to program like this? I don't know. I do feel that it is ugly, smelly and hacky (in a bad way). 

This is unfortunately how I have been programming my latest web app. HTML and CSS are new to me, yet they are both very human-readable. So I've gotten by, by just searching for what I think I want (give me a table or a new section) and then Frankenstein'ing it into my app. 

I am not proud of my Frankenstein-ing behavior. To stop it, I have started learning HTML and CSS with codecademy. 

After I've learned HTML and CSS, I will probably look back and think that I was a lousy programmer for cutting and pasting so much. I hope that my future self is a vastly superior programmer to my present day self. 

Yet, it's important to recognize that cutting and pasting is an important part of programming. Sometimes, you need to copy something in order to get something to work. You can go back and try to grok it fully later. 

Disclaimer: I'm not sure where plagiarism starts and ends when talking about code. I do not support passing off someone else's work as your own, but learning from others is ok. I think this is another separate debate. In the grey areas, to be safe, you should at least do these things: 1. ask for permission from the original author, 2. give proper attribution.