Shoutout to the free Codecademy lesson that crashed on me and showed me what a bug actually is

Diana Burns · 2026-10-18T20:05:04.249675+00:00

Last month I was working through a free JavaScript lesson at my kitchen table in Columbus, and the little code box just spun forever and never loaded. I sat there for 20 minutes thinking I broke the whole site. Then I opened the browser console for the first time ever and saw a red error message staring back at me. Turns out the lesson page wanted my ad blocker off, but that red text was the whole lesson for me. I had read about errors in tutorials but seeing one in real life made it click. I've been opening that console on purpose now just to see what breaks. What was the first real error message that actually taught you something?

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Shoutout to the free Codecademy lesson that crashed on me and showed me what a bug actually is | Coding For Beginners - Thought Shares