Programming can be a pain in the ass for the dumbest reasons

I'm sure anyone who has programmed before has had a brain-fart moment that makes them feel like a fool. I just had one. I'm programming in something called PICO-8, which is this cool "fantasy console" to make retro games in a limited setting1. I'm following a written tutorial for some nifty animation stuff. I'm going through it trying to get the desired outcome (a fun text animation) and it just does. not. work. at all. I don't know what's wrong with it. I'm looking at the tutorial text, line by line, character by character, and I'm sure I've written everything correctly. I do this multiple times because there must be something wrong. I think maybe the tutorial is out-of-date but that's not the issue. I go "Okay, the text isn't animating so there must be something wrong with the drawing / animation code." Can't figure it out. "Maybe there's something wrong with the update code?" Nah, can't see anything. "How about when I initialize the variables?" Nada. I'm tearing my hair out for…

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