Just realized a missing semicolon cost me 4 hours on a Tuesday night

I want to start a debate here because I keep going back and forth on this. Two weeks ago I was writing a simple JavaScript function to add up numbers in an array, and it kept returning weird results. I stared at the logic for 4 hours, rewrote the whole thing twice, and even asked a friend in Denver to look at it over screen share. Turns out I just forgot a semicolon on line 12, and the whole thing worked in 30 seconds after I added it. So here is my question for everyone. Is hunting down tiny syntax bugs just part of learning to code, or should beginners use tools like linters and formatters from day one? On one side, fighting through your own mistakes teaches you to read code closely. On the other side, 4 hours for one character feels like a waste when a free tool could have caught it. Where do you all land on this?