The key, IMO, is having awareness about when you don’t quite understand something, because that means you can’t reason about the code to prove it correct to yourself in your head. And then, avoid shipping code in such a state at (almost) all cost. This awareness can be trained, and I suspect that the author’s virtually-bug-free shipping record is based on that. My personal experience is that bugs are nearly always caused by code where I ignored my inner uncertainty about the code.
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The key, IMO, is having awareness about when you don’t quite understand something, because that means you can’t reason about the code to prove it correct to yourself in your head. And then, avoid shipping code in such a state at (almost) all cost. This awareness can be trained, and I suspect that the author’s virtually-bug-free shipping record is based on that. My personal experience is that bugs are nearly always caused by code where I ignored my inner uncertainty about the code.