Back in 2018, my first web app crashed because I forgot a semicolon in a loop

I was in my dorm room at Ohio State, trying to get a simple page to load user data, and the whole thing just froze for like an hour. I finally found the missing semicolon after checking the browser console, which showed a single syntax error. How do you guys usually track down those tiny, annoying bugs when you're starting out?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantf731mo ago

Honestly, that's the worst feeling. Tbh I still make those tiny mistakes all the time. What I do now is run my code through a linter before I even try to run it. It catches most of the dumb syntax stuff right away. Did you have any kind of setup like that back then, or were you just coding raw and hoping for the best?

keithbutler1mo ago

Back in 2003, @grantf73, we just debugged by eye.

karen_roberts41mo ago

Yeah, linters are a lifesaver now. Can't imagine just eyeballing it like @keithbutler said. Even with a linter, I still stare at the console for ages sometimes.