I write a lot of “defensive” C# code in my day job expecting that someone very inexperienced / offshore will be working with it in the future (and I will be reviewing it four months later when no longer on the project). I call it “corporate coding”. Lots of interfaces that must be adhered to, ioc, injection and annoyingly strong patterns. Anything that makes going off the rails a lot of work — the path of most resistance — glaring in code reviews. But…key logic concentrated in a few taller files so none of the drilling through abstraction so easy to comprehend for a newbie. I want to take some time with a defensive coding approach and LLMs. Particularly scoping it to a certain project or folder in a layered architecture. Why let it know of the front end, back end, database all at once? Of course it’ll get discombobulated.

I’ve also been experimenting with giving an LLM coins and a budget. “You have 10 coins to spend doing x, you earn coins if you m,n,o and lose coins if you j,k,l” this has reduced slop and increased succinctness. It will come back, recount what it’s done explaining the economy and spending. I’ve had it ask “All done boss I have 2 left how can i earn some more coins?” It’s fun to spy on the thinking model working through the choices “if I do this it’ll cost me this so maybe I should do this instead in 1 line of code and I’ll earn 3 coins!”