Coding Prompts

Coding prompting is the practice of guiding a language model to help design, write, explain, and debug code while keeping the human developer in control.

The goal is not to replace thinking.

The goal is to accelerate correct thinking.

Why Coding Prompts Often Fail

Most beginners ask:

• "Write code for X"

This skips the most important step — design.

Without context, the model guesses architecture, constraints, and edge cases.

This leads to code that works sometimes, but breaks in real systems.

How Developers Think Before Writing Code

Before writing a coding prompt, developers clarify:

• What problem are we solving?
• What inputs are expected?
• What output format is required?
• What constraints exist?

A good prompt mirrors this thinking.

Design-First Coding Prompts

Start by asking the model to help with design, not implementation.

We need to process user login requests.
Describe a clean function design before writing code.
  

This forces the model to reason about structure before syntax.

Incremental Code Generation

Once the design is clear, generate code step by step.

Avoid large, monolithic prompts.

Based on the design above, write only the function signature and docstring.
  

This keeps humans in control of complexity.

Guided Implementation Prompts

After validating structure, ask for implementation.

Now implement the function logic.
Assume inputs are already validated.
  

The model now operates within defined boundaries.

Understanding What the Code Does

Never accept code you don’t understand.

Use explanation prompts after generation.

Explain what each part of this function does and why it exists.
  

This reveals hidden assumptions and logic.

Debugging with Prompts

Coding prompts are powerful debugging tools.

Provide symptoms, not guesses.

This function fails when input is empty.
Analyze the possible causes and suggest fixes.
  

This mirrors how senior developers think.

Refactoring Prompts

Once code works, improve it.

Refactoring prompts focus on clarity, not features.

Refactor this code to improve readability without changing behavior.
  

This builds maintainable systems.

How Learners Should Practice Coding Prompts

Learners should:

• Start with design-only prompts
• Generate code in small steps
• Always ask for explanations
• Manually rewrite parts of the code

This builds real coding skill, not dependency.

Common Coding Prompt Mistakes

Teams often:

• Ask for full applications at once
• Skip design reasoning
• Trust code blindly

These habits create fragile systems.

Practice

Quick Quiz

Recap: Coding prompts guide design, implementation, explanation, and debugging while keeping humans in control.

Next up: SQL generation prompting — using prompts to safely generate and validate database queries.