Once good development becomes a habit, regularly counting is not a big deal. One's board sense and quick evaluation in a glance serves to remind one. But if you're sitting there at move 8 and not sure what you ought to do next, checking your state of development with a nifty little tool can be helpful, for sure. It might just remind you to get that piece off the back rank instead of making yet another not-so-clear pawn move. 
Counting Development
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Dec 7, 2011
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DJAbacus wrote:
You can scan the board to see if you are ahead and then if you are, as the video makes it clear, you must aim to hold this advantage through the game. That's the important point.
I haven't seen the video in question so I'm not going to comment on the specifics, but my guess is that you've critically misunderstood something.
Development is a temporary, time based advantage. It means that you have used your initial tempi to develop pieces while your opponent has not done so (at least to the extent that you have). Usually 3 tempi in the opening is worth almost a pawn (according to Dan Heisman anyway).
However, you can not "hold on" to that advantage through the game. Like all tempi based advantages, it is a temporary thing and must be converted to some other advantage.
An advantage in development can be decissive for the game if you use your advantage to open up lines and files for a winning attack. And that something that is often seen. But it can also be used to force permenant positional weaknesses upon the opponent, or changed into a win of material, or converted in some other way.
But the idea that you can, let alone should, hold on to a development advantage for the entire game is simply wrong. You can't do that, and except in very specific circumstances you almost should never try.
Just watched IM Pruess video on this subject. I enjoy watching these videos as always pick up useful tips that can help improve my game.
There seems to be different opinions on how to 'count' development, but my thought is, 'Do you really need to regularly count to see your development advantage? Isn't having an advantage enough info without having to be concerned about how to quantify development advantage so accurately?'
You can scan the board to see if you are ahead and then if you are, as the video makes it clear, you must aim to hold this advantage through the game. That's the important point.
Thoughts please?