frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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.

Floating wind turbines could soon power AI data centers at sea

https://electrek.co/2026/03/05/floating-wind-turbines-could-soon-power-ai-data-centers-at-sea/
1•JeanKage•1m ago•0 comments

GPT-5.4 in Microsoft Foundry

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/introducing-gpt-5-4-in-microsoft-f...
1•swaminarayan•2m ago•0 comments

Skyrim, Starfield, and the risks of AI-generated content

https://yadin.com/notes/generated/
1•dryadin•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ABES – a memory architecture for belief revision in AI agents

https://github.com/Aftermath-Technologies-Ltd/adaptive-belief-ecology-system
1•bradkinnard•6m ago•0 comments

Open Call for Posters [Center for Human-Compatible AI]

https://workshop.humancompatible.ai/#call-for-posters
1•chai-admin•12m ago•1 comments

How Munich became an engine for defence start-ups

https://www.ft.com/content/162076f9-3eed-4b11-9a36-d5717c8b357b
1•rustoo•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A simple, auto-layout family tree generator

https://familytreeeasy.com
3•familytreeeasy•16m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How are LLMs supposed to be used for warfare?

1•sirnicolaz•17m ago•2 comments

GPT-5.4 Scores 0.62 F1 on Understanding Handwritten Edits in Dickens

https://dorrit.pairsys.ai/
2•svcrunch•19m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Do AI startups even bother with patents anymore?

1•maxtqw•22m ago•1 comments

Show HN: EnvSentinel – contract-driven .env validation, zero dependencies

https://github.com/tweakyourpc/envsentinel
1•tweakyourpc•24m ago•0 comments

A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/03/04/a-basket-of-new-fruit-varieties-is-co...
1•vinni2•26m ago•0 comments

Quantized Hall Drift in a Frequency-Encoded Photonic Chern Insulator

https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/2dyh-yhrb
1•westurner•26m ago•0 comments

Qcut – Free browser video editor (no install, no signup)

https://qcut.app/
3•martin_renaud•30m ago•2 comments

Claude Code Compaction Viewer

https://github.com/swyxio/claude-compaction-viewer/
1•handfuloflight•33m ago•0 comments

Modular Diffusers – Composable Building Blocks for Diffusion Pipelines

https://huggingface.co/blog/modular-diffusers
3•nathanmarz•33m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Do you have a good solution for isolated workspaces per project?

1•straydusk•39m ago•0 comments

TeX Live 2026 is available for download now

https://www.tug.org/texlive/acquire.html
12•jithinraj•52m ago•3 comments

Show HN: Triplecheck – Review your code free with local LLMs

https://github.com/raullenchai/triplecheck
1•raullen•1h ago•0 comments

Gemini-flash-latest silently broke Search grounding for 1 month

2•takibboinz•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI Benchy – AI benchmarks and comparisons

https://aibenchy.com/
1•XCSme•1h ago•0 comments

Did anyone try this Docker desktop alternative?

https://www.empiricapps.com/zenithal/download
1•mburlac•1h ago•0 comments

Caroline affair – eventually influencing the development of international law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_affair
1•vinnyglennon•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: WingNews – Htmx Hacker News Reader

https://news.wingman.actor/
2•ChaseRensberger•1h ago•0 comments

AI Doesn't Remember Yesterday. How to Design Team Memory for AI Workflows

https://github.com/htuzel/flalingo-mem-bridge
2•htuzel•1h ago•2 comments

Ask HN: Wish Linux tmpfs support compression option

2•gry_gh•1h ago•0 comments

Howard Abrams' Literate Programming with Org Mode [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUuz9-CtCwY
2•todsacerdoti•1h ago•0 comments

My SoC Analyst Writeup – Support by star, thanks guys

https://github.com/ogtamimi/SOC-Analyst-WriteUp-LetsDefend.io
2•ogtamimi•1h ago•0 comments

Create PDF Resume

https://createpdfresume.com/
1•tahirasadov•1h ago•0 comments

All of you doubted me, and said I was hallucinating on AI

https://ryanshamim.substack.com/p/the-inference-efficiency-paradox
1•anima-core•1h ago•1 comments