[bhuber]

This isn't at all universally true, it depends on the costs of failure. If you're programming a Mars rover, then sure, avoiding mistakes is paramount. If you're writing a one-off data analysis script that only has to work once and only has to be mostly accurate, spending a week coming up with the ideal specification and writing a full comprehensive test suite is usually much less productive than hacking at it for a few hours until it works. Good software developers know when to make the appropriate safety tradeoffs given the goals and constraints of the task at hand.

[jeffbee]

That's a straw-man retort. I never said every task requires one to go up a mountain. I only said that sometimes a software developer has reason to stop and think.

Also I would suggest that ad-hoc analyses and other such hacks are unlikely to lead to PRs and other visible artifacts.

[bhuber]

I should have been more clear; I was mainly disagreeing with your first sentence. The rest mostly makes sense to me. Ad-hoc analysis was only one example, you could easily replace it with working on a prototype, where part of your goal is to find mistakes by making them, as that is often the most efficient way to discover what the problems with your design are.