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My 3 AM debug session turned into a 9 hour nightmare over a missing semicolon
Last Tuesday I spent 9 hours stuck on a Python script that kept throwing a syntax error. Turns out I forgot a semicolon after a function call on line 87, but only in the production file, not my test copy. I literally had my coworker Dave from Memphis look at it and he spotted it in 30 seconds. Has anyone else wasted an entire day on something this dumb?
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charlie_allen1mo ago
Nine hours on a syntax error is brutal but here is the part that gets me. Python does not even use semicolons like that. They are legal but pointless, and a stray one would not cause a syntax error unless you stuffed it somewhere weird. So either this story is fake, or the real bug was something else and Dave just got lucky. I say that because I have chased the wrong fix for hours and sworn the thing I changed was the answer. Once you decide it was the semicolon, your brain stops looking for anything else. Next time save yourself the day and diff the production file against your test copy right away.
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