> Generally, it is considered preferable to find problems as early as possible.

Whole heartedly agree.

> If a program fails to compile or quickly crashes (because of a failed assertion), then I consider that better than having to unit test and fuzz test your code to find that particular problem.

This confuses me. My typical order would be:

fails to compile > unit test > quick crash at runtime > slow crash at runtime (fuzzing)

I am curious to understand why we differ there.