Brute force problem solving is a technique like any other. Has its pros and cons, places it excells and places it doesn't.
I can only expend so much energy learning a problem domain so many times a day, sometimes, using instinct and learned heuristics to find a fix without building a mental model of the wider picture is good enough.
I should also add it depends greatly on your codebase. Some code bases are so rotten your heuristics won't work but if you have clean abstractions or even just code that generally limits the amount of weird and unexpected shit it does you should be fine brute forcing a few things saving brain power for later in the day.
So true. I'll add that sometimes there is not really a mental model to be built for the code because there wasn't one when the code was built; too many programmers over the years, each with their own style.
I can only expend so much energy learning a problem domain so many times a day, sometimes, using instinct and learned heuristics to find a fix without building a mental model of the wider picture is good enough.
I should also add it depends greatly on your codebase. Some code bases are so rotten your heuristics won't work but if you have clean abstractions or even just code that generally limits the amount of weird and unexpected shit it does you should be fine brute forcing a few things saving brain power for later in the day.