Spent 2 days chasing a bug that turned out to be a missing semicolon

I was fixing my resume parsing program last month and it kept crashing on certain PDFs. Turns out I forgot a semicolon in the date checking function, and it took me about 16 hours over two evenings to find it. Has anyone else spent way too long on something that simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

robinson.matthew18d ago

Robert's comment about ninjas is pretty accurate honestly (though I'd compare them more to invisible ink that only shows up when you're about to give up completely). The thing you mentioned about a "sinking feeling" is real but I actually get the opposite reaction now - it's more of a relief mixed with embarrassment when I finally spot it. Like, that moment when your brain goes "oh come ON it was RIGHT THERE the whole time" and you kind of want to laugh and cry at the same time. I think the real trick is learning to trust your gut when something feels off, because usually when I'm staring at code for hours without finding the bug, it's something stupid simple like a semicolon or a typo in a variable name. The worst ones are when you're sure it's some complex logic issue but really you just typed "recieve" instead of "receive" in a string comparison.

robert24818d ago

Hate when that happens, man. Missing semicolons are like ninjas hiding in plain sight. Glad you finally found it, that sinking feeling when you realize it was that simple is the worst.