Anti-patterns while working with LLMs

This post resonates a lot with me. I've been experimenting with Claude Code to write code that interacts with the SolidWorks SDK. It is both extremely complex (method calls with 15+ bools, doubles, strings; abbreviated parameters; etc) and obscure. It has been like pulling teeth. Claude would hallucinate methods, parameters etc.

I tried using Context7 MCP with the SolidWorks docs but the results were not satisfactory. I ended up crawling SW's documentation in HTML, painstakingly translating it to markdown and organizing it to optimize greppability [1]. I then created a Claude skill to instruct CC to consult the docs before writing code [2]. It is still stubborn and sometimes does not obey my instructions but it did improve the quality of the code. Claude would need 5 to 10 rounds of debugging before getting code to compile. Now it gets it in 1 to 2 rounds.

[1] https://github.com/pedropaulovc/offline-solidworks-api-docs

[2] https://github.com/pedropaulovc/harmonic-analyzer/blob/main/...

This post is a mess. The best advice is clear and specific, and this is neither.

The examples are at best loosely related to the points they're supposed to illustrate.

It's honestly so bad that I cynically suspect that this post was created solely as a way to promote click3, in the first bullet, and then 4 more bullets were generated to make it a "whole" post

I played a lot with LLMs over the last year and built a multitude of products with it and it’s always just the same bottom line outcome: - be specific - keep it small - be precise when adding context - don’t expect magic and shift deterministic requirements to deterministic code execution layers

All this is awfully painful to manage with current frameworks and SDKs, somehow a weird mix of over-engineered stuff while missing the actual point of making things traceable and easy changeable once it gets complex (my unpopular personal opinion, sorry). So I have built something out of my own need and started to offer it (quite successfully so far)to family & friends to get a handle on it: Have a look: https://llm-flow-designer.com

Perhaps we can add that using LLMs for logical, creative or reasoning tasks (things the technology isn’t capable of doing) is an anti-pattern.

[dead]