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Comment by wazHFsRy | Hacker News Reader

I think this misses something. The output here is something not the thing. Yes the scaffolding is important, but the requirements are even more important. You need crystal clear requirements + great scaffolding and then the implementation becomes mechanical.

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This is amazing because it's the same logic and argument about how to do good software engineering that's been around for 40 years. If you just write good enough requirements, a good enough, detailed specification, then your software team can't fail, even if they are low-cost engineers from a developing nation. It's the classic Waterfall method.

That was totally upended by agile, that emphasized that yes, a clear, unambiguous specification is needed, and the best language for that is a programming language. Don't waste time writing a detailed spec in English, get right to writing it in code that you can execute and get immediate feedback on.

Now people want LLMs to write the code for them, so they are back to saying we just need to give the LLMs clear enough direction, a clear specification. It's amazing to witness history not exactly repeat itself, but very clearly rhyming

Sorry but what do you mean crystal clear requirements?

I don't particularly think "y7u8888888ftrg34BC" would pass as a crystal clear requirement at my workplace :<

Do you mean something different?

I mean you get a random game in the authors example :) But in real life you do not want a random game. That's what I mean, you need the great scaffolding + exact requirements. Then the prompt to do the implementation does not matter too much.

Recent research has shown that specs actually degrade output, so I’m more inclined to think you’ve got the slot machine mentality mentioned up-thread.

Source?

Last I checked, specs improved output quality. There are hiccups with complex, difficult specs but I guess that much is obvious.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11988

> y7u8888888ftrg34BC

This is more information than the average users gives you when requesting new features.

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