The Joy of Old-School Coding After a Stupid Mistake
04 Jul 2026 #codingYesterday, it happened again.
I had an error message that made me scratch my head. For a moment, I thought, “God, why am I doing this? I should start a garden or something.”
I copy-pasted the error message into Google. StackOverflow didn’t help that much. I was tempted to go to Copilot. But I held my horses.
A few moments later, “Oooohh, here it is!” A one-line code change fixed it. Stupid Entity Framework Core!
I was in a rush a few days before and I missed a small detail: I used a collection to map a one-to-one relationship. Simple! I know. Only integration tests caught it.
For a moment, an error message made me want to quit. A second later, I was back in the game. Yet again. For the nth time.
I guess AI doesn’t give you that feeling—or does it?
Whether you code the old way or with AI, check out Street-Smart Coding—It covers debugging, testing, and many 28 more lessons to help you code like a pro.