Nothing wrong with covers. Anything that gets you where you want to be. The issue I have is with musicians who just play covers and didn’t learn what went into making/writing the song. Like @Slow_Hand mentioned, being able to recreate a song is the epitome of a cover. You’ll be able to write a song then, given you had an idea of course.

I also like the idea of doing that for programming. There’s so much out there you can learn from. Just start building…