frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Is AI code verification becoming your main bottleneck?

4•ochidaniel4•5h ago
I am a beginner in programming and honestly I have been using AI to code a lot but I am scared to ship because of the countless stories of AI code silently breaking, AI code not being reliable long term and all that.Please share your stories with me how you handle AI code reliability and verification and what I can do to be more confident before I ship

Comments

jpcom•3h ago
Congrats and welcome to the wonderful world of ports.

I would say yes, verifying that the code not only does what you expect but also doesn't do anything of the things you do not expect, is the main bottleneck.

That is: do-all-the-things, please, and don't-do-all-the-non-things, as well.

Ideally, one can reason through their application at a high-level and have a "spec" or specification that the LLM can build from and check against.

You can also have the LLM go back through and tell you about any vulnerabilities you need to address before shipping.

I don't know exactly what you are shipping, but in general: never give the LLM root access or command-line access in a deployed app. Give it the minimal permissions necessary to accomplish its work/role. Pin versions [if you're working with version 5, explicitly say that, rather than just using the "latest" one since that's a moving target].

Some things are not obvious until deployed to a live environment, so do thorough testing. You can have an LLM generate test cases and run a "test suite" to check your code does all-the-things and none-of-the-non-things [undesirable outcomes] this way.

But again, when you have many moving gears finally coming together in a product, in a real, online environment, your best bet is doing lots of testing first to give yourself confidence you've caught most of the edge-cases, and that there are no "catastrophic" edge-cases lurking, unaccounted for.

If you still have any specific questions or want to zoom in on any aspect of software creation, please ask us

jmathai•2h ago
This may not be a popular opinion but I’ll say it anyways. I’ve done a lot of this and am sharing anecdotal information.

The claims that AI writes inefficient code may often be right. If and when it’s an observed problem, you can use AI to improve performance.

The claim that AI writes insecure code is probably also correct. You’ll want better safeguards here based on your product. The infrastructure you choose to deploy on can help as well - the LLM can help you design for this.

The claims that AI will delete your database are unlikely and an indication that permissions were too loose. You can also sandbox the code which runs. Again, AI can help you design this.

This is not an endorsement to blindly deploy code you haven’t verified.

My feedback is to be as optimistic as possible. Learn where the edges are. Find ways to patch them systematically. And let your confidence grow or shrink from your own experience.

Ask HN: Is AI code verification becoming your main bottleneck?

4•ochidaniel4•5h ago•2 comments

Looks like Claude is down anyone else

3•codehead•1h ago•2 comments

Ask HN: In your experience, what are sound conventions for e-ink UI development?

212•BoxOfRain•5d ago•72 comments

Ask HN: How are you finding the job market in 2026?

4•dzonga•4h ago•3 comments

Ask HN: Why Connected Home Appliances?

3•ripe•6h ago•5 comments

Ask HN:Why do websites today refuse to work on EDGE/2G?

5•DenisDolya•9h ago•2 comments

Ask HN: Are there any production LLM pipeline setups to learn from?

4•atif089•12h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

315•david927•3d ago•1155 comments

Ask HN: Responsible/trustable background check companies?

5•levinb•11h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What do you think of this novel slider puzzle? [video, full rules, beta]

3•amichail•12h ago•3 comments

Ask HN: How's Everyone Feeling Today?

11•arm32•12h ago•10 comments

Ask HN: How do you envision the AI Software Factory?

2•DavidHaerer•12h ago•0 comments

Human task board for my agents

2•jbdamask•12h ago•0 comments

We built a job board where the employers aren't human. Here's what broke

4•Taskpoolai•12h ago•4 comments

Remind HN: Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight

10•cjbarber•11h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: GitHub project that showed all edits (somewhat proving human authorship)

3•4d66ba06•15h ago•1 comments

Bitbucket CLI

4•scr2em•16h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What are GitHub's push-farm botnets for?

4•ghspamwatch•17h ago•1 comments

Ed Zitron on CNBC Squawk Box Talking Nvidia, Unprofitable AI Labs

7•johnbarron•13h ago•0 comments

DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813

5•uneven9434•11h ago•0 comments

SETI@Home was the coolest thing

27•b112•2d ago•7 comments

Ask HN: Could DNA be represented as "an embedding" in an AI model?

3•greenmoonx•1d ago•1 comments

You've reached the end!