Make APIs that fail gracefully rather that fallback silently

I have been on and off toying with my own 3d renderer since last year. I started on Windows but recently I have tried to validate the cross-platform capabilities by porting it to Mac. I had to fight off the limitation of MoltenVK for a while, but the real issue came from a different source. For weeks, if not more, my lighting/colours were off. And when I thought I had finally fixed them to get something I was happy with on Mac, it turned out completely off and washed out on Windows. Back and forth and back and forth. The bug turned out to be connected to what I would qualify as bad API design. But before we get there, I need to make a small digression. The AI subplot Coming off my recent article, I felt like maybe Claude could help me find the issue. After all, colours are hard. But in asking AI to solve this I made the mistake of using it to solve something I wasn’t enough of an expert in. So it took me on a wild ride. Here’s what it suggested I fix, rewrite or implement to address…