Strict Loading to Catch N+1 in Development

I enable strict loading when I want N+1 bugs to fail loudly during development instead of quietly shipping to production. In Enable strict_loading on associations, I mark the relationships that routinely get iterated (has_many :line_items and belongs_to :customer) with strict_loading: true, which forces me to think about preload behavior up front. Then, in Controller includes, I load the page the way I intend to use it by calling Order.includes(:customer, :line_items).find(...). When I miss an include, Rails raises right where the lazy load would have happened, which is exactly the feedback loop I want. It’s a small toggle, but it turns “performance discipline” into something the framework enforces instead of something I hope everyone remembers.