After 15 years in technology/software development my impression is that your favorite methodology says more about you than anything else. The sharpest engineer

After 15 years in technology/software development my impression is that your favorite methodology says more about you than anything else. The sharpest engineers I know distinguish themselves mostly by how rarely they resort to running code at all. Instead they seem to have a mental model of the code base they are working on, similar to that of a mathematician. They can write code for days, weeks (or even months) and just know it will mostly work once they run it.