youGuysActuallyHaveThisProblemQuestionMark
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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Red squiggly line and an error: “Missing a ; on line 57”
Some programmers apparently: “Figuring this out will take the rest of my day”
No, but once I accidentally added a ; in a place I didn’t know possible. Took me an hour of beating my head before I found it. Was PHP and the code was something like:
for (…); {
}
I didn’t know this was valid syntax but apparently this created a for-loop without a body. As for the disconnected block, I have no idea why it’s valid as they don’t even introduce a new scope.
It’s a programming joke/meme made by someone who never programmed.
I do forget semicolons, but it’s not really a problem for me. Just put it there. It’s like forgetting to put sugar in tea. Inconsequential and easy to fix.
No Jetbrains IDE?
I refuse to believe that anyone that’s ever programmed in a language that requires semicolons (especially while learning programming) has never gotten a compilation error due to a missing semicolon
I don’t even understand what this meme is trying to say…
Do people still prefer notepad++ over something like vim or vscode? Not being funny just wondering because I moved away from notepad++ as soon as I realised sublime (and later vscode) was a thing.
It actually happens to me when i switch between languages. IDE notifies me immediately though
This was the case maybe back in 2004, but 20 years later, the IDEs now even almost add them by themselves.
This was super common in the days before compilers and contextual syntax highlighting got as good as it is today. This wasn’t always the case.
There was a whole body of research and head scratching to make compilers give those good error messages over the past few decades. The computer doesn’t actually just know whats wrong. It has to re-analyze the code _after_ getting an error to give back those relevant error messages, that we now basically take for granted.
Im from a prior generation and this was kind of a rite of passage everyone had to go through. It sucked but it also weeded out a lot of people who had no business being there a lot faster.
; issues only got to me in my database class using SQL
“`js
function fuckYou(n) {
return fucker => {
for (let i = 0; i < n; i++) {
console.log(`fuck you, ${fucker}`)
}
}
}
const fuckYouTwice = fuckYou(2)
(() => {
fuckYouTwice(“Javascript”)
})()
“`
> TypeError: fuckYou(…)(…) is not a function
Damn, I forgot the ‘;’ on line 9 =(
Yeah the worst that’ll happen is… I’ll write a bunch of code, press Start or Launch, it’ll fail to compile and show me the line (or I’ll just see either the missing bracket or the squiggle) and I’ll be like “lol woops” and the problem is solved.
I guess it can be a problem when launching a project the size of (using an example from work) a AAA videogame, since they’re very modular and the time between “Start Debugging” and <crash> can be a few minutes of recompiling different modules. Not a *huge* issue, just quite annoying.
I’ll always remember my teacher that used Notepad++ to teach us C++, he would often forget semicolons and then save and compile the file and then it would take him 5 minutes to figure out what was wrong
It does happen from time to time. The ide tells me instantly but it still happens
Welp, when the uni teaching you coding requires you to prove it with pen and paper and they actually lower your score for missing one, the joke is very much a real frustration.
Now that I’m done with all that bs and can actually use an IDE (you know, how one does actual coding in the real world) it’s absolutely a non – issue.
Laughs in JavaScript
Context: The guy on the left is using Turbo C.
This is only an issue if I’m trying to write code while sharing screen. Being observed means that I make 200% more mistakes than normal and somehow become blind to everything my IDE tells me.
I fucking wish those were my programming issues.
I could see this happening someone’s if you go back and forth between Python and C, for example. You might also forget the’f’ in printf here and there
Why are half of them hooded and the other half crying?
When I learned C on TurboC this was a problem it happened to me a lot xD, nowadays with those IDEs it’s not much a problem anymore.
It may surprise you to know that programming existed before modern IDEs. Many programmers alive and active on the internet today got their start in those prehistoric times. Wild, I know but I assure you it is true.
JavaScript enjoyers have this built in into the language itself.
man sometimes it be like that when you flip between python and c++
Who uses nano
i bet yall’s unsafe languages cant detect greek question marks
No.
Python programmer.
Nah now I just miss ? And watch as everything freaks out telling me explicity set Null. :'(
If you coded in SystemVerilog and there’s no IDE anywhere to tell you if the macro needs or doesn’t need a trailing semicolon, yeah it’s still occasionally a problem even with Verible.
Debugging an error in a C header with macros though, that’s what separates boys from men
Bouncing between Python and C# can be a struggle
I’ve taken up C# as an optional module in my game designer course and I don’t get how after all these years of coding, adding “;” isn’t automatic.
“Error, there’s no ; on line 34”
Cool…. Then add it instead of telling me it’s not there?
But I’m still a newbie at it so there’s probably a reason that can’t happen.
Es lint/prettify crying in the corner
TBH I struggled with that when I first started learning actual programming language. My first actual language was Java and before that I had learned only HTML, CSS in school. I used to misplace , and ; a lot. Especially inside for loops and while declaring multiple variables in a single line.
But it was only for a week. Now I sometimes struggle to remember the difference between inconsistent casing between different languages.
You are assuming that everyone uses IDEs and that IDEs have existed forever.
Someone left out the greek comma. Give all of your programmer friends greek commas for christmas x
For some reason, my college had us start out by using pico to write C++. I graduated five years ago. I understand “computer science” is not “coding” but holy shit, I forgot semicolons all over the place.
One of the worst bugs I had was an extra semicolon. Something like this:
“`
if (rareCondition);
{
Log(“Oh crap”);
}
“`
Couldn’t figure out why we were always having that log message when the rareCondition shouldn’t happen that often. Boy did I feel stupid.
I’ve made semicolons illegal in my eslint config for is projects lol
Two places in JS where a missing `;` messes things up, and the IDE can’t catch it because it is correct Code, is before `[…]` and before `(…)`.
I regularly use the pattern `[value 1, value2, …].forEach(doSomething);` If the previous expression has no `;` this is interpreted as a continuation of that previous expression.
The second example are IIFEs. With the introduction of block scoped variables, they have become rare but not entirely extinct.
I usually need them when I need to do async work inside of a sync function. When I can’t turn the entire function async because it has to synchronously return a value; like some cancellation token/function.
no. its just people that have no idea of coding that repeat this joke to the death.
you guys use semicolons?
I remember forgetting it when I was first learning to program. Now it’s pretty hard to miss with the IDE pointing it out and it not compiling.
if you work on a big repo you don’t get red squiggly lines / intelisense.
I’ve had a hard to debug error where i forgot the closing } in my cpp header file. Every other file that included it started throwing errors for each single line, so basically i had error log file of ~200k lines long when compiling.