Lots of good suggestions there. The important thing is to establish exactly where the problem is: the hint helps you achieve that.
Using hints as a debugging tool is a very powerful technique. They are very useful for letting you know what is going on in a mission, whether it be a trigger being fired, or an AI group reaching a waypoint or whatever you like.
Hints never occur automatically, you have to use the hint command. Obviously you take thedebugging hints out before you release the mission to the public.