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A client's 'simple' website update turned into a two day hunt for a missing semicolon.
They wanted a new button, but the whole page broke. I argued with myself for hours about whether to rebuild the section or keep digging. Has anyone else lost a full day to a tiny syntax error?
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morgan8985mo ago
Ugh, that is the WORST feeling. My rule now is to take a literal walk after an hour of dead ends. Come back, paste the whole broken section into a fresh file, and retype it line by line. Your brain sees it differently the second time. That missing semicolon will JUMP out at you.
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cora8635mo ago
Was it really a semicolon or a missing bracket?
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jenkins.reese5mo ago
Oh man, definitely a semicolon. Brackets are usually easier to spot cause they come in pairs and your IDE will highlight them. Semicolons are tiny little jerks that hide in plain sight. I've spent entire afternoons hunting one down only to find it sitting right where I'd looked ten times before. Bracket problems at least tell you something is unbalanced. Semicolons just silently break everything with zero warning.
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