This tradeoff obviously can’t be evaluated without considering quantities. What percentage of your bug load is reduced, at the cost of how much development time

This tradeoff obviously can’t be evaluated without considering quantities. What percentage of your bug load is reduced, at the cost of how much development time? That said, it’s not that simple. There are threshold effects (more than X amount of time = your company is dead) and intangibles (how do you feel while programming). But anyone making a blanket statement without considering these things is participating in a dumb internet argument.