First:
Did you think Programmer B showed initiative but that Child B cheated?

There are parameters that I am going to assume to answer this question. In short, I feel that the child cheated simply because of one of my assumed paramters that he passed off others' work as his own which is plagiarism(sp?). I doubt that child B placed the names of the people whose code he used in his project.

I think both children showed initiative, really. They just showed different kinds of initiative. Child A definitely got more out of his effort than Child B.

Now, on to the programmers. In a professional environment programmer B did nothing different than what a lof of programmers do. The old cliche, "Don't re-invent the wheel" is used as justification. Also, the employer rarely cares how the project is done as long as the specs are fulfilled by the deadline. Most programmers who have an incling of honor give credit where credit is due within the comments of their code, including me. Programmer A will probably have gotten more out of his work, though. Programmer B definitely cut corners. Some would place him on a pedastal for his creativity. This is definitely a debatable subject. I think both should get credit; different kinds of credit, however. I have more respect for programmer A for putting his time, heart, and sweat into his work. If I were an employer, I'd be more interested in Employee A.

In short, the scenarios are not equal. The school has specific parameters for children to do their work (one of my assumptions) that, if not fulfilled, the work is incorrect. Employers have less stringent paramaters thus making the scenarios unequal in comparison. However, if the employer scenario had the same parameters as the school scenario then I would agree that Employee B cheated to get his work done and vice versa if the school scenario had a more relaxed set of paramters equaling that of the employer then child B certainly would not have been considered cheating.

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- Jim
Insert clever comment here...