Q: A junior engineer configures the CI pipeline to outright fail explicitly if Code Coverage natively drops identically below `100%`. Why is this considered an extreme anti-pattern in DevOps engineering?

Because of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Mandating 100% test coverage heavily incentivizes developers to write incredibly brittle, meaningless assertion-less tests simply to trick the coverage parser into executing every line of code. It actively punishes refactoring and destroys velocity. Furthermore, the last 15% of coverage usually involves mocking obscure framework internals or impossible exception states (like the server catching fire), offering zero actual business value while doubling development time. Focus strictly heavily on tracking *critical path* functionally and keeping coverage around a realistic 70-85%.