Wasn’t the whole thing though that they could have done it in a year but their god punished them by making them wander aimlessly for 40 years?

As another commenter pointed out, the “40 years” was more figurative, likely meaning something more like “a generation.”

The reason being, I’ve heard, as they fled Egypt, they were fleeing slavery, the only form of life they had known. For their people to settle successfully, they needed to wander for “40 years/a generation” so that they could know what it was like to live as a free people.