That backwards thinking applies to both? When you’re building some product you’re necessarily making decisions and performing work on behalf of your users, so it still makes sense to think about what they’re going to be doing and interacting with and how from the outset.

To a degree, they’re the same thing. If you’re making an API or library, your product is the code and your users are other developers. They’re not really substantially different, it’s all about knowing your audience.

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I’m not sure if this is how they got there, but the style of engineering I’ve been gravitating towards for years is starting from the intended user interface and working backwards. It consistently results in the strongest APIs, the cleanest abstractions, and the most intuitive tools I’ve found of any other ‘paradigm’.

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