frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•9mo ago
After months playing with LLM models, here's my observation:

- LLM is basically useless without explicit intent in your prompt.

- LLM failed to correct itself. If it generated bullshits, it's an inifinite loop of generating more bullshits.

The question is, without explicit prompt, could LLM leverage all the best practices to provide maintainable code without me instruct it at least ?

Comments

ben_w•9mo ago
Your expectations are way too high.

> - LLM is basically useless without explicit intent in your prompt.

You can say the same about every dev I've worked with, including myself. This is literally why humans have meetings rather than all of us diving in to whatever we're self-motivated to do.

What does differ is time-scales of the feedback loop with the management:

Humans meetings are daily to weekly.

According to recent research*, the state-of-the-art models are only 50% accurate at tasks that would take a human expert an hour, or 80% accurate at tasks that would take a human expert 10 minutes.

Even if the currently observed trend of increasing time horizons holds, we're 21 months from having an AI where every other daily standup is "ugh, no, you got it wrong", and just over 5 years from them being able to manage a 2-week sprint with an 80% chance of success (in the absence of continuous feedback).

Even that isn't really enough for them to properly "leverage all the best practices to provide maintainable code", as archiecture and maintainability are longer horizon tasks than 2-week sprints.

* https://youtu.be/evSFeqTZdqs?si=QIzIjB6hotJ0FgHm

revskill•9mo ago
It's not as high as you think.

LLM failed at the most basic things related to maintainable code. Its code is basicaly a hackery mess without any structure at all.

It's my expectation is that, at least, some kind of maintainable code is generated from what's it's learnt.

ben_w•9mo ago
Given your expectation:

> It's my expectation is that, at least, some kind of maintainable code is generated from what's it's learnt.

And your observation:

> LLM failed at the most basic things related to maintainable code. Its code is basicaly a hackery mess without any structure at all.

QED, *your expectations* are way too high.

They can't do that yet.

Show HN: [Jack The Butler] Open-source, self-hosted AI chatbot for hotels

https://jackthebutler.com
1•arash_kay•3m ago•1 comments

Low-bit inference enables efficient AI

https://dropbox.tech/machine-learning/how-low-bit-inference-enables-efficient-ai
1•vinhnx•3m ago•0 comments

Streamdown – Terminal streaming Markdown that rocks

https://github.com/day50-dev/Streamdown
1•ivanjermakov•5m ago•0 comments

Neovide Cursors for Ghostty

https://github.com/sahaj-b/ghostty-cursor-shaders
1•surrTurr•6m ago•0 comments

"Ed is the standard text editor." (1991)

https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html
1•archargelod•7m ago•0 comments

Chiplets Get Physical: The Days of Mix-and-Match Silicon Draw Nigh

https://www.eejournal.com/article/chiplets-get-physical-the-days-of-mix-and-match-silicon-draw-nigh/
1•transpute•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Built Vokab: a vocabulary learning app built with SwiftUI

https://vokab.net
1•meszmate•10m ago•0 comments

Elon Musk X's is lauching Crypto and Stock Trading using smart cash tags

https://cryip.co/elon-musks-x-to-enable-crypto-and-stock-trading-with-smart-cashtags/
1•deskithere•14m ago•0 comments

Informational inequivalence quantum computing is using a different format?

1•CreativeLabsRo•14m ago•0 comments

Moss-kernel: Rust Linux-compatible kernel

https://github.com/hexagonal-sun/moss-kernel
2•birdculture•16m ago•0 comments

Globs – a bigger, more forgiving version of Connections

https://threeemojis.com/en-US/play/globs
2•knuckleheads•17m ago•0 comments

Handsome at Any Cost

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/style/clavicular-looksmaxxing-braden-peters.html
1•mellosouls•21m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Klimly – multi-model weather with uncertainty and activity insights

https://klimly.com
2•ailibrarian•24m ago•0 comments

4chan for Clankers

https://www.4claw.org
2•kekqqq•29m ago•0 comments

Vector Database Migration

1•dev_agileforce•34m ago•0 comments

Firstproof_oai [pdf]

https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/a430f16e-08c6-49c7-9ed0-ce5368b71d3c/1stproof_oai.pdf
1•yusufozkan•39m ago•0 comments

Seed2.0 Model Card [pdf]

https://lf3-static.bytednsdoc.com/obj/eden-cn/lapzild-tss/ljhwZthlaukjlkulzlp/seed2/0214/Seed2.0%...
1•whwhyb•42m ago•0 comments

Taste for Makers

https://paulgraham.com/taste.html
1•tosh•43m ago•0 comments

Markdown Notes for VS Code

1•Elharis•53m ago•0 comments

LLMs are going to print money on Roblox

https://github.com/paralov/app-bloxbot-ai
1•CipherBolt•1h ago•1 comments

Windows: Prefer the Native API over Win32

https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/issues/31131
1•nikbackm•1h ago•0 comments

ClickHouse Agentic Data Stack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubQOsCfjMTI
1•benjaminwootton•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Letter Flow a Word Game with Liquid Glass Design

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/letter-flow-word-puzzle-game/id6753643265
1•suryanshJ•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Drink Now: Water Reminder App

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drink-now-water-reminder-app/id6758991291?mt=12
1•suryanshJ•1h ago•1 comments

PowerFox Web Browser - A brand new browser for PowerPC Macs

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/powerfox-web-browser-a-brand-new-browser-for-powerpc-beta.24...
1•Matias314•1h ago•0 comments

I'm 15 and built a full workspace app in 4 months – now selling the codebase

https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/73595/spaco-a-spatial-workspace-urgent-sale-open-to-offers
1•GavinRatta•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: AI Station Navigator – LLM=CPU, Agents=Processes, Skills=Apps

https://github.com/canishowtime/ai-station-navigator
2•mazilin•1h ago•0 comments

colorForth Tokens (2022) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl5IEpUBxfc
1•tosh•1h ago•0 comments

The bagel shop saving money and emissions with plug-in batteries

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/12/bagel-shop-saving-money-emissions-plug-in-bat...
1•thunderbong•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mool (Loom clone). Free, offline-only, no signup

https://mool.fly.dev/
3•william-cohen•1h ago•0 comments