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I fully agree here. It's also not uncommon to have the reply for specific items be "Ahh, well that is a bit of an edge case see because of X and Y" and then you learn there are many many "special cases" to the point that they aren't that special anymore.

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This comment brings back memories of a project.

We were working through many complex business flows and running into exactly what you describe in many areas. Some of the project people with less experience complained that we were spending too much time on exceptions and slowing down the project. We had to explain that when each exception happens 100 times a day with significant impact on business productivity, then it doesn't matter whether you call it an exception or not, it's important to solve for.

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