Break Down Complex Prompts for Better AI Results

A junior developer told me: “AI is good… but I can’t rely on it for coding.” I asked him to show how he prompts. He wrote: “Create a Spring Boot API for user registration” The output? Okay… but messy and incomplete. So I suggested a small change 1. List required fields 2. Create request DTO 3. Write controller 4. Add service logic 5. Include validation He tried again. This time — clean, structured, usable. I told him: “You don’t need better AI. You need better steps.” This is chain prompting → Break problem → Guide step-by-step → Get better results Even for learning: Instead of: “Explain Spring Security” Try: 1. Authentication 2. Authorization 3. How Spring handles both 4. Simple JWT example» If AI feels inconsistent, your prompt is probably too big. Think in steps. Ask in steps. #PromptEngineering #Java #SpringBoot #AIForDevelopers #CodingTips #DeveloperGrowth

In other words, programming, but in English. This is the bit people are missing. You have to know what you're trying to build in order to properly drive the AI and to do that you have to know how you'd build it. To do that, you have to know how to programme.

Do all that even when not using AI. For me the biggest value of AI is developing the problem space. I throw away the AI solutions and work on each solution myself after being exposed to a range of viable ideas and paths. I enjoy coding, why would I want AI to do all the fun parts?

The irony is that to write that 'better prompt,' the dev already needs to know the architecture. We learned those steps through years of trial and error. If you skip the manual grind, you won’t know how to break the problem down for the AI in the first place. Prompting isn't the skill—engineering is.

This is actually the key most people miss. AI doesn’t struggle with coding — it struggles with vague thinking. The moment you break things into steps, the output improves instantly. Clear thinking → clear prompts → better results.

Or you can automate a lot of this by using the planning mode

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