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The majority of the money spent on your program, if it's a successful commercial effort, will be spent AFTER it's released and you've gone on to other things. Clarity of purpose and expression is therefore essential to the health of the bottom line.
Consider also the liability issues. A failure in your software may cause damage, even kill someone. Disclaimers and end-user agreements are not always a successful defense. If you're not in the habit of checking the returns (or other available error indicators) of the functions you use, perhaps you should consider investing more "wasted" effort. The writers of the functions you use do not normally promise to deliver the goods -- they promise to deliver OR INFORM YOU THAT THEY DID NOT. As a side benefit, the information contained in these checks are great debugging aids, as are the moment-to-moment contents of your data entities.
If you're planning a career in any professional sense, there is much to consider beyond correct syntax and "mostly functional" operation.
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