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Debug loop broke my sleep at 3am, still not sure if I fixed it right
Last Thursday I was working on a simple login form for a local class project. Everything passed in the browser console, but the backend kept returning a 500 error. I was on my couch, laptop on my knees, at 3am after my third cup of cold coffee. Turned out I had a trailing comma in a PHP array that my editor didn't flag. Spent 2 hours chasing a typo. But here's the thing, I fixed it by deleting the whole function and rewriting it from scratch instead of just removing the comma. Now I'm wondering which approach is actually better for a beginner: patch the mistake or rebuild the block? I've seen tutorials push both ways. Has anyone else hit a wall where the fix felt wrong even though it worked? What do you do when your brain is fried and the error is stupid simple? Rewrite or just delete the comma and go to bed?
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bettys5126d ago
Ever try just commenting out the whole block and pasting a clean copy back in? That trick saved me more than once when I was too tired to spot the actual bug, since a fresh block forces you to retype every line and your eyes catch the typo on the way. For a beginner though, deleting the comma and going to bed is honestly the better habit, because rewriting hides the lesson and you end up making the same mistake next week.
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