Choose error strategies deliberately

Make deliberate choices about error handling strategies based on the context. Decide between early returns with appropriate error reporting, panic mechanisms, or silent failures with diagnostics:

1. Early returns for expected error conditions:

   // Prefer this when the error is expected in normal operation
   if !output.status.success() {
       return Err(anyhow::anyhow!(
           "Git checkout failed: {}",
           String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stderr)
       ));
   }
   

2. Panic only for true invariant violations:

   // Use panic! over unreachable! when an invariant is violated
   match definition.scope(db).node(db) {
       NodeWithScopeKind::Class(_) => {
           panic!("invalid definition kind for type variable")
       }
       // Valid cases...
   }
   

3. Silent failures with diagnostics when appropriate:

   // Return a sensible default and let type checking handle the error
   if !is_callable(test_expr) {
       return Truthiness::AlwaysFalse;
   }
   

Always document functions that can panic and under what conditions. When handling results, be explicit about error propagation choices - consider whether errors should be logged, propagated, or transformed into different error types based on the needs of the caller.