grep-the-types-statics-firstlisted

# Grep the type's statics first ## Purpose Given "apply these defaults without clobbering what the caller set", the obvious move is a loop: iterate the names, check whether the target already has each one, set it if not. Eight lines, correct, passes. And in a codebase that has existed for fifteen years, that operation has a name, a one-line call, and edge-case handling you didn't write. The hand-rolled version costs three ways: it is longer, it duplicates semantics that can now drift apart, and — the expensive one — it signals to the reviewer that you didn't look. Reviewers read unfamiliarity with their own API as a proxy for care, and increasingly as a tooling signature. The check is one grep. It is cheaper than the code it replaces. ## When to use - Before writing any loop or helper that manipulates a type the project owns. - Especially for these verbs: merge, default, override, unwrap, flatten, normalize, convert, copy-with-change, wrap. - When a reviewer asks "why not use X?" — treat it as a class of miss, not one miss, and sweep the rest of the diff for siblings. ## When NOT to use Don't stall on it. Two greps and a look at the type's public surface is the whole budget; if nothing turns up, write the loop and say in the PR that you looked. ## The practice (checklist) - [ ] Read the type's own factory/utility surface: `grep -n "public static" path/to/TheType.java` - [ ] Search the codebase for the verb, in the house's vocabulary: `grep -rn "wrapD