Someone posts a code snippet as a screenshot. You like what it does. You retype it (or worse, copy via OCR). You run it. It does something different from what you expected.
Why screenshots lie
Whitespace, hidden Unicode characters, lookalike letters (capital I vs lowercase l vs the number 1), and zero-width spaces all survive screenshots and break code in subtle ways. A screenshot of code is a picture, not the code itself.
Rules
- Always read the actual file, not a screenshot of it.
- When pulling code from articles or social media, copy from the original text source, not from an image.
- When in doubt, ask Claude Code to read the file you are about to use and tell you what it does in plain English.