[Haul4ss]

I was hoping someone would mention being a pilot in this discussion.

If you learn to fly, you will learn to follow checklists. Many, many checklists.

A good instructor will tell you that while you do need to follow the checklists, it never hurts to do one last check. One final walk-around before getting in the cockpit, one last check of radios/transponder, one final scan across your engine instruments before takeoff, etc.

If you do these things enough times, you'll find the occasional instance where you forgot something obvious, or accidentally skipped a checklist item.

To OP, as you miss each edge case or QA thing you should have found, you add it to your checklist. Before you check in a new piece of functionality, run it through your checklist. Also, do one last walk-around of the code. How will the user interact with it, what are the API dependencies, etc.

You're not second-guessing yourself, but you always verify even your own work before calling it done. Over time, you'll learn to follow both the best practices, and your own intuition built from years of learning from your mistakes.

[lj3]

I came here to say basically this. Checklists are unreasonably effective. And if you can automate them with some form of metaprogramming, even better!

[newbear]

Example?

[lj3]

Here's a good one: A few years back, I had a quick stint as a wordpress PHP magician. The php community has a tool called php code sniffer. The wordpress community has a collection of "sniffs" (rules) to enforce coding conventions[0]. One folder of rules is called "Security"[1]. Set up a git precommit hook to run phpcs with whatever set of rules you like and it will give you a list of things you need to fix before your code can be committed. Automatically.

In the JS/webpack/react world, there's eslint. You can write custom rules to automatically check for and enforce whatever you have on your checklist.

[0]: https://github.com/WordPress-Coding-Standards/WordPress-Codi...

[1]: https://github.com/WordPress-Coding-Standards/WordPress-Codi...

[ellius]

I am notoriously absentminded. I would constantly forget my lunch, leave the lights on, whatever. Since writing down checklists for my morning and evening routines, I don’t miss anything. The fact is that we’re human beings. As the book “Getting Things Done” says, your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.

[godelmachine]

Reminds me of the book - "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande