Comment by csours

If your code has side effects, it only ever seems to be working.

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> the newbie says "aww, why isn't it working?"

> the intermediate says "yay, it's working!"

> the expert goes "hmm, why is it working?"

I've also seen this as

My thing isn't working and I change X and now I get error J instead of error K, so now I have to change X back because it's still not working.

Where K is a "better" error than J, such as K = failed to connect and J is Server 500 error. With J you are at least talking to a webserver.