Oh god this is such a nightmare. It takes much longer to build something that works not the first try, because then I have to force-simulate a mistake to make s

Oh god this is such a nightmare. It takes much longer to build something that works not the first try, because then I have to force-simulate a mistake to make sure things were actually correct in the first place. Test Driven Development had a fix for this, which I used to do back in day when I was evangelical about the one true way the write software. You wrote a test that failed, and added or wrote code only to make that test pass. Never add any code except to make a failing test pass. It didn't guarantee 100% correct software, of course, but it prevented you from gaslighting yourself for being too awesome.