🤝🔍 Trust, but verify

Apparently, this is an old Russian proverb that Ronald Reagan popularized.

This is good general advice in life -- don't automatically distrust people and go looking for problems, but when something does not look or feel right, verify.

As engineers, when we are building something new, this is important.

✅ Are our assumptions correct?

✅ Have we checked the edge conditions?

✅ Did this change break anything else?

✅ What are we missing?

As systems become more complex, two tools come to mind:

▶ Simulation (a faster/cheaper way to verify)

▶ Automation (testing, deployment, etc. -- do things humans don't have time for)

In complex systems, blind trust does not get us very far, especially in ourselves. As engineers, the work we should verify the most is our own.