Ever think about why drawing it out works so well? It forces you to slow down. When a loop is just in your head, you skip steps. But with a pen, you have to write "okay, i equals 0, check if it's less than 5" and draw that arrow. It makes you see the exact moment things go wrong, like when you forget to increase your counter. Your hand moving makes your brain follow the real path.

My first real cabinet build I cut everything to exact size and the glue-up pulled the face frame out of whack. I spent hours trying to fix it with a block plane. That forum guy's advice about leaving an eighth inch is a total game changer. I've been doing it on every project for the past two years and it saves so much headache. It feels wrong at first to not cut to the final line, but it's the right way to work.