Bug blindness

When my friend tried to use my computer he found it impossible to use the mouse because mouse pointer movement seemed almost random. When I sat down at the computer again and used the mouse I didn't have any problem using it at all, but on looking at what I was doing with my hand to smoothly move the pointer in a straight line, I was violently throwing my hand all over the place. I realized I must've adjusted to the detritus on the mouse ball over time as it accumulated and I was somehow compensating for the mouse's extremely erratic tracking by making countervailing erratic movements3. I thought it was pretty amazing that I could not notice that I was doing this and I always wonder if I'm doing some equivalent thing today. I sometimes think about all of the mitigations I've developed to work around bugs. For example, when opening a new Google Doc, I used to immediately put the title I wanted into the doc. At some point, maybe ten years ago or so, Google Docs added some kind of delay…