Spent 6 hours stuck on a missing curly brace in my first Python script, do you debug or walk away?

Rose Baker · 2026-09-30T04:15:04.993982+00:00

Last month I started learning Python through that free course on YouTube and I was feeling pretty good about myself until I hit a wall on a simple guessing game script. I kept getting an IndentationError and I stared at those lines on my laptop in my kitchen for like 4 hours straight, rewriting the same block over and over. I finally texted my cousin who codes for a living and he found the problem in about 30 seconds, I had a colon where a closing bracket should have been on line 17. The worst part is I had skimmed right past it probably 20 times. So here is the debate I want to hear from you all about, when you get stuck should you sit there and grind through it yourself no matter how long it takes, or is it smarter to just ask for help right away? One side says you learn way more by fixing your own bugs and building that muscle, the other side says you waste hours that could go into learning new stuff. I honestly still do not know which one I believe. How long did your first real bug take you to squash and did you end up asking someone or toughing it out?

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Spent 6 hours stuck on a missing curly brace in my first Python script, do you debug or walk away? | Coding For Beginners - Chatter Central