Just spent 4 hours fixing a semicolon in Python

I copied a script from a 2019 tutorial and it kept failing until I realized I typed a semicolon at the end of a line, which Python doesn't care about but it broke my indentation on the next block. Has anyone else lost a whole evening to something this dumb that wasn't even a syntax error they taught in class?

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tessacarter1mo ago

Ha! Four hours for a semicolon sounds like a waste, but honestly, maybe it was a good thing. That's the kind of mistake that forces you to actually read every single line of your code, character by character, instead of just trusting it works. I bet you learned more about Python's indentation rules in those four hours than in any class lecture. Sometimes the dumbest bugs are the best teachers, even if they make you want to throw your laptop out the window.

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john4301mo ago

Man, four hours on a semicolon in Python? That's brutal but honestly kind of beautiful. Every programmer has that one bug that makes them question their whole life choices. The weird part is you'll probably remember that exact line of code forever now, way more than anything else you've written.

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lilychen1mo ago

Four hours of my life I'll never get back, but hey, at least my laptop survived. 😂

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