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The Worst Typo I Ever Made

Tom Scott | September 25, 2025



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Written by Tom Scott

Comments

This post currently has 28 comments.

  1. @Isabel-of4wq

    September 25, 2025 at 11:43 am

    Been there done that once – I was 22. Recently a young lad mechanic screwed up something on my car and it was bad – I told the boss he shouldn’t worry or discipline the lad because the lad already felt so bad he’d never ever do that again in his life. He was so grateful !!!

  2. @tfrowlett8752

    September 25, 2025 at 11:43 am

    I nearly lost the data on my external hard drive recently after it was accidentally reformatted. The data was still there but computer wouldn’t recognise it. Thankfully a computer repair store recovered the data and I now store it on SSD’s instead.

  3. @SamFams.

    September 25, 2025 at 11:43 am

    What I thought was going to happen was, — would get replaced by <hr>, but also on that page, making <hr> get replaced by <hr>, causing a feedback loop making everything crash or smth

  4. @jxnisnotfunny

    September 25, 2025 at 11:43 am

    seeing tom genuinely get stressed and anxious just from recounting this story is insane. if the actual situation wasn't already enough, that really shows people who can't/don't program like myself how bad this was

  5. @Infamous_Squire

    September 25, 2025 at 11:43 am

    I used to play 'stump the chump' in college classes for programming. Got a group stuck for over an hour because I replaced a single lowercase 'L' with a '1'. Sometimes you just have to pretend you don't notice the simple things and exercise caution

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