The Semi-Colon Error
Our summer interns started recently and I've had the opportunity to work with a few of them. One day we were helping a coworker implement a story. We were coding, building, and testing in short cycles as we went. One time a build failed. After a few minutes of looking, we found that we'd omitted a semi-colon. We fixed it quickly and got back to work. This experience and a few others like it caused one of the interns to ask what's the longest that I've spent on a simple error like that. Without thinking too much I'd responded that I've spent a few hours at least once on something so simple. While that seems quite ridiculous, especially to a new-comer, it's not out of the ordinary. Over the years I've come to prefer simple, stupid mistakes like this. While they can be frustrating to find, they're easy to understand and fix. You find it, you fix it, and you're on your way. Simple. Easy. Quick. This is much preferred to some of the other problems