Assignment Versus Equality

Spent the day noodling around Photoshop, toying with various ideas. This is something I ended up making that dates back to maybe 2002.

Of the many mistakes I made as an early programmer, this was a huge moment: one equal sign when I was supposed to use two (assignment versus equality). I lost a lot of time troubleshooting an issue that turned out to be something simple.

A long time ago, a fellow programmer I knew got so frustrated with making this mistake so often, he took to using a permanent marker and carved this into his CRT monitor so he would never forget.

I like to think that this is a mistake that nearly every programmer makes, early on in his or her coding projects. It’s a silly reminder that the little things can have big consequences.

Related:
Code Day