The Symptom: No Error, No Result
We moved a script that had run happily on the Windows device for weeks over to the Mac mini. There was no error message, and also no output at all. Notifications stayed quiet and the log was empty. That is the scariest kind of failure.
The Cause: One Line with a Full Folder Path
The script had a folder path hard-coded, starting with a drive letter. Our small team uses three machines (the Windows device, a home computer, and the Mac mini), and each has different folder paths. When the script hit a folder that did not exist, it concluded there was nothing to process and exited normally. The same bug struck four times in a single month.
The Fix: Stop Memorizing Addresses, Ask Where You Are
• **Before**: type the folder path by hand, and fix it manually whenever the device changes
• **After**: one shared module finds the base folder from the script's own location
from device_paths import BASE, repo
data_dir = repo("articles") / "data"
Only lines that truly belong to one specific device are exempted with an intentional-exception comment.
The Safety Net: Counting What Remains
On every sync, a check script reports how many hard-coded paths are left. A falling number means the cleanup is going well, and a rising number is an alarm that old habits have crept into new code.
The Result
• Same incident: 4 a month → 0
• Setting up a new device: editing paths file by file → run right after syncing
• Silent failures: now visible as a number on the check report
No error does not mean success. For a small non-developer team, plugging the holes that fail quietly first brings a lot more peace of mind.