Yeah, exactly. This seems to be what the criticism was, but seemingly the OP morphed that into "never ask for help". No, you should ask for help after you've spent a reasonable amount of time and effort going down the obvious solution paths first.

The power of the human species is that we're able to share knowledge. The undisputed best way to learn is through human collaboration. There's a reason why we've designed our education system with teachers/instructors etc. instead of locking students in an empty room with a text book.

The idea that you learn better if you bang your head against a wall for days is just flat out wrong. Perhaps if the person you're learning from is in competition with you, or is a terrible teacher, or doesn't like you, or is in a company culture that is against collaboration, but if you have a competent instructor, learning via collaboration is the undisputed best way to learn. That teacher can (and should) explain to you all the dead-end paths that you would have banged your head against yourself, in a matter of minutes, and you'll get all the same benefits out of it as if you had done it yourself.