That time I spent 3 hours trying to fix a single typo in my CSS

I was updating my personal blog's header and this one button just wouldn't align right. Took me forever to realize I missed a semicolon after a hex color in my stylesheet... like 3 hours of clicking around in Chrome DevTools, refreshing the page over and over. Finally found it at 2am after my third cup of coffee. Has anyone else spent way too long on a tiny mistake that should have been obvious?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_parker19h ago

And then after you finally find it you feel stupid for about five seconds before the relief kicks in that you don't have to look at it anymore. The semicolon is probably the single most expensive character I've ever typed in terms of time wasted hunting it down. Sure would be nice if CSS editors just highlighted missing semicolons in red like they do with parentheses in code editors.

holly_walker7619h ago

I finally started using a CSS linter after that happened to me, and it catches those missing semicolons before I even save the file.