It's used rather extensively in safety-critical public transportation in Japan [1] and to a lesser extent in New York (along with many other countries) [2]. This can easily extend to software without overcomplicating by just setting the expectation that engineers, Q&A, etc. do this even when alone.

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-j...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/26/num/

The take away by both is there is actually something to do which can wake people up when the stakes are high, and they might not be doing what they expect.

Also, I now realized that aviation checklists seem to tend to be done similarly with gestures - at least from what I saw on YouTube, not sure if that's representative or only used during education (?)

I'm honestly trying to think of the way how I could approach this for myself, just I don't see a clear solution yet that wouldn't require me to spell out everything I type in my terminal window.

https://t.co/TjfX5K54H7

If your application has space concerns, you can modify this approach to be like a recycle bin where you delete records which are no longer valid and have been invalid for over a month (or whatever time frame is appropriate for your application). However, I think this is unnecessary in most cases except for blob/file storage.

Sure, but we can only do so much. I find its good bang for buck and alternatives that might prevent that are not always available, so we do the best we can. You gotta make a call on whether its enough or not.