I've done a lot of continuous deployment to staging and dev, with regular 'releases' to prod. It doesn't need to go straight out to prod every time you push some code.
If you are deploying to your company wide dev, then you either need to apply the same principals as you appy to the prod because you blowing up dev would make other developers using the environment non-productive, which costs money i.e. you have a company bank account in the blast radius.
If you are deploying to your own dev, then you do not need a CD because you are only doing deploys when you sit in front of your computer actively working, which means you can type a command/trigger a deploy when you need it.
If you are deploying to your own dev, then you do not need a CD because you are only doing deploys when you sit in front of your computer actively working, which means you can type a command/trigger a deploy when you need it.