Your code doesn't compile, how to find the error.

[n4n0b1t3]

If you are trying to follow the lessons but here and there throw in some own ideas on how to write a function etc. You will sooner or later reach a point, where your code doesn't compile and you just don't know why.

compare and isolate

If you are somehow true to the code of the lesson but your code just doesn't compile, you can always download the repository and check if the repo code compiles.

getting the original

Here is in short what I would do to get the original repo:

cd ..
mkdir project_from_repo
cd project_from_repo
brownie init
cd ..
mkdir temp
cd temp

copy the GitHub Cli code and paste it into the terminal

gh repo clone PatrickAlphaC/smartcontract-lottery

Then after the repo is downloaded copy the folders contracts, interfaces, scripts, and tests and paste-overwrite them into the newly created and initialized project_from_repo folder.

Important: Try to compile the original repo. If this doesn't work either, you have to find out why. All the following steps only make sense if you have a running version.

comparing

I am on Windows so notepad++ is a natural choice for me. Here is how to install the right plugin. Open Notepad++ and open Plugins > Plugins Admin. Here search for "compare" and install it.

After installation, you will have in the plugins menu the compare feature. First, open the two files to compare then open the compare menu and add the first file to compare and then the second file to compare with.

Here is a simplified example of how it would look like when I would have omitted one important line.

If your code is structured differently, it makes sense to first structure it in the same order compared to the original. Arrange the import statements, the instantiation of variables, and the function in the same order. Don't care if you have more or fewer variables, this is easy to compare. But if both documents are structurally the same it is much easier to find the differences.

isolating

OK, now that I know the differences and have not yet spotted an error, I can start moving some of my code that is different to the bottom of the file, comment it out, and replace it with the original code.

This is now a cycle of trial and error. Try to find out which part of your code doesn't compile. The circle should get increasingly narrower when replacing your code with the original. At one point (hopefully before both files look identical) the code should start to work. Now it is time to bring back the parts which were yours but which worked.