Certainly one difference is this: if I’m developing a one-off tool, or simply in early stages of development, it’s closer to being in a driving simulator with the seatbelt unbuckled.

Not every line of code is life or death.

To expand on the metaphor: Imagine driving slowly and having to jump out of the car a lot.

A new car chassis in development might well get driven around with out a body and windshield attached, slowly around a test track.

Unused imports are something I have all over my codebase before I get it to production. It's not worth dealing with in my development loop, and it would just be an annoying distraction

Does it? In my explorations I had to add bogus operations to variables and imports so the compiler wouldn't explode on me while commenting stuff out.