I Spent 10 Hours Fixing a Missing Comma in Python

Last week, I wrote a bulk posting script, and it crashed every time with a syntax error. I spent 10 hours checking indentation, quotes, and brackets, only to find a missing comma in a dictionary on line 142.

The problem was that I was using fancy quotes instead of straight quotes in my string literals. Python threw a syntax error, but the traceback didn't point to the quotes because they looked like valid characters in my editor.

Now I use a linter on every script before running it, and I copy-paste strings instead of typing them to avoid bad quotes. It's saved me 20+ hours of debugging in the last month.