It sounds like a problem with the author, one probably drilled into their head by management.

The longer you are here, the more weird shit you see, and the definition of “know” gets a lot murkier.

You aren’t going to “know” if it works in production, even if you put it into production. Which is something that only makes sense about the fourth time you encounter a piece of shipping code that is so fundamentally rotten that you are not sure how it ever came up with the right answer.

You don’t know if the whole car is working. You only know it’s moving the direction you wanted it to move and it hasn’t exploded, made horrible sounds, or smells. So it’s mostly working.

Every tool and process should be working to make you less afraid of trying things (like deploying to prod). Otherwise they’re just helping you build a bureaucracy instead of software.