Chapter 3 of 4
Building with Quality and Empathy
How to craft meaningful names, useful errors, clear documentation, and thoughtful APIs.
Key Insights
Good naming, error messages, and documentation are product features — they shape the user's experience as much as the UI does.
Errors should be actionable: tell the user what went wrong AND what they can do about it.
Shift left — fire errors as early as possible, catch problems before they cascade.
Notes
The Importance of Good Error Messages
Errors are a product surface. When something goes wrong, the error message is your product's voice. A good error message: (1) explains what happened in user terms, (2) provides enough context to understand why, (3) suggests what the user can do next. Bad error messages like 'Something went wrong' erode trust.
Crafting Actionable Errors
For every error, answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? What should the user do? Choose error codes and types carefully. Raise errors at the API or UI layer where the user can act on them. Shift left — fire errors as early as possible in the pipeline.
Naming as Product Design
Names are the first interface users encounter. A good name communicates purpose, scope, and behavior instantly. Whether it's an API endpoint, a feature name, or a variable — investing time in naming pays dividends in user comprehension and reduced support burden.
Edge Case Thinking
List out all edge cases before building. What happens with empty input? Duplicate data? Network failures? Concurrent access? Permission boundaries? Edge cases are where products break and users lose trust. Product-minded engineers anticipate these systematically.
Quotes
“This is the book that finally bridges the gap between writing code and creating impact.”
“The Product-Minded Engineer is one of those books that belongs on every software engineer's shelf.”