Shoutout to the free AI tool that fixed my broken code in 5 minutes

I had a Python script for data cleaning that kept crashing on a specific file type. After two days of trying to fix it myself, I pasted the error and the code into DeepSeek Coder. It pointed out a hidden encoding issue I never would have caught. The fix was just one line change, and it ran perfectly. Anyone else find a free AI coding helper that actually gets it right?

3 comments

3 Comments

josepha322mo ago

Honestly, that hidden encoding issue is a killer. Tbh I've had similar problems with CSV files from weird sources. Was it something like a UTF-8 BOM that was messing with your script?

bennett.jana2mo ago

Ugh, tell me about it. Those hidden BOM markers are the worst. I once spent a whole afternoon trying to figure out why my first column header was coming up as a weird character. The file looked fine in a basic text editor, but the script just choked on it. Had to use a hex editor to finally see the problem. Stuff like that really makes you appreciate simple, clean data sources.

spencer82mo ago

Yeah that's exactly it. The BOM is actually for UTF-8, not UTF-16. It's still a pain though lol.