Title before edit: I hate programming, why did i choose this field

TL;DR: Stupid mistake, made by hours waste.

Basically, I was extracting date from the SQL db, and it was not displaying. I tried everything, heck I even went to chatgpt, and copilot. Two and half hours of trying every single thing under the sun, you know what was the issue?

SELECT task, status, id FROM mainWorkSpace WHERE user_id = @user_id

I FUCKING FORGOT TO ADD ‘date’ TO THE DAMN QUERY. TWO AND HALF HOURS. I was like, “Ain’t no way.” as I scrolled up to the query and there it was, a slap in the face, and you know what was the fix?

SELECT task, status, date, id FROM mainWorkSpace WHERE user_id = @user_id

Moral of the story, don’t become a programmer, become a professional cat herder instead.

  • @[email protected]English
    54•6 months ago

    The best advice I can give to new developers is “question your assumptions”.

    “But I set that variable” - did you?

    “It should default to 0” - is it?

    Remember - if things were working as you think they are then your code would be working.

    • @[email protected]
      4•6 months ago

      I have great colleagues who still bust out this kind of cross-examination when we’re trying to figure out why my code is a bag of poo. I have some friends I’ve known 25 years who will do this, and it’s every bit as annoying and infuriating as it’s invaluable help.

    • @[email protected]
      3•6 months ago

      Basically how I do rubber duckie debugging

      See? It should work because I initialize it as this and iterate doing this and this which gives me a data structure like this and … wait … oh hell that clearly doesn’t produce the data structure I want. 🤦

      We tend to see what we want to see, not what actually is.