Spent 3 hours debugging a missing semicolon in Python

I was coding from my kitchen table last Friday night, trying to finish a beginner project for a weather app. Everything looked fine in my head, but the terminal kept throwing a syntax error. I rechecked the indentation like 10 times, swapped my coffee mug for a beer out of frustration. Turns out I had a missing colon after an 'if' statement on line 47, not a semicolon which Python doesn't even use. My roommate walked in and asked if I was okay because I was literally talking to my monitor. I felt like a total idiot, but I laughed it off and finally got the app running at 2 AM. Has anyone else wasted hours on something this dumb?

2 comments

2 Comments

pat_park1d ago

Respectfully, I gotta push back on this one. Three hours on a missing colon after an if statement is honestly pretty normal for beginners. Python's error messages can be super vague sometimes, and when you're tired and frustrated at 2 AM your brain just stops working right. I've definitely spent way longer on dumber stuff, like an hour trying to figure out why my variable was undefined only to realize I'd spelled it two different ways. The whole "talking to your monitor" thing is just part of the deal when you're learning to code, it means you're actually trying to debug instead of giving up. Your roommate probably doesn't get it, but every programmer has had that exact moment of yelling at their screen over something simple. Don't beat yourself up, you got the app running which is what actually matters.

alice2421d ago

Late night coding is a trap. @pat_park you're right, the brain just stops seeing obvious stuff after a certain hour. Started setting a 45 minute timer before bed after that 5 hour debugging session.