It was then, after three hours of trying to get random tests to pass that she realized that when she refactored to make the function more verbose and to add comments, she had accidentally typed one `&` instead of two. And it took someone else looking at it to notice.

Words cannot express how frustrated I am with myself.

Idk about your language, there's an ESLint rule to ban bitwise operations.

I've come to like spartan linters a lot since I started using Clippy. Even though you obviously don't want to ban bitwise operations always and everywhere, marking the regions where they are intentional with a formalized comment enforced automatically helps.

I know that feeling way too well. Don't feel bad though, at least you know now that whenever things don't work, it is not because of a systemic failure but rather something stupid/silly as a wrong character in the wrong line...

Yea... Once spent a day looking for a problem, even asked on Stack Overflow. What was the problem? I had "menus" where I needed "menu"

Don't let anyone tell you what to feel. I'd feel furious too. (⁠ノ⁠ಠ⁠益⁠ಠ⁠)⁠ノ