Have you ever spent a lot of time, I mean a LOT of fricking wasted gut-churning time working on something, and it refuses to work? You have a sneaking suspicion that it’s something stupid, and then one day the solution just comes to you? I wrote a blog system for the college, and I kept getting errors when it came to adding entries. Had other people look at it; they couldn’t find the problem, either. Finally I just let it sit on the side.
And then it came to me today. Checked it. Sure enough, it was a simple, stupid beginner error – I’d used a reserved word in one of the field names in that table. Date. Omigod…all of that frustration, and I didn’t even think about that.
I felt like doing a Rocky-esque dance around the staffroom, shaking clenched fists above my head. *bounce*
Frequently, yeah. I once even dreamt the ASP code to solve a problem I was having with a site. I was sitting there reading the code off of the monitor in this dream, and when I woke up it all made perfect sense. I wouldn’t pretend it was some kind of prophecy bullshit though, it was just my mind solving the problem while I slept.
If only all problems could be solved while we slept! ;)
If only all problems could be solved while we slept! ;)
They can be, if you sleep for a sufficiently long time.
“Why did you miss your deadline?” “I was asleep.” But you had six months!” “I’m a deep sleeper …”
See? :-)
*Laughs*
I’ll remember that next time I’m getting close to a deadline…
I’ve never dreamt the solution to a problem – although I would have welcomed it in this case! Definitely a “D’oh!” moment; I’m just glad that I had two co-workers look at it and they didn’t think of it, either. :)
It seems that the more advanced anyone becomes with their knowledge, the less the think of the basic problems. It’s certainly true with me. I always end up looking for the most complicated of errors in my code, then it ends up being a typo, or like in your case, a reserved keyword. ;)
That happened to me once, and after that I always used names like customer_date or invoice_date.
Then there was the missing semicolon incident that cost me three days….