frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: LLM is useless without explicit prompt

4•revskill•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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.

AutoKernel: Autonomous GPU Kernel Optimization via Iterative Agent-Driven Search

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.21331
1•OsamaJaber•1m ago•0 comments

CAD and Cam Applications on HP-UX Unix Workstations

https://www.openpa.net/hp-ux_cad.html
1•naves•2m ago•0 comments

I think AI is pushing me toward the AGPL – by Julio Merino

https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/ai-and-agpl-licensing
2•rbanffy•5m ago•0 comments

UK abandons police database cloud move after £35M transformation stalls

https://www.theregister.com/public-sector/2026/05/08/uk-abandons-police-database-cloud-move-after...
2•latein•9m ago•0 comments

ActCam: Zero-Shot Joint Camera and 3D Motion Control for Video Generation

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06667
1•danborn26•9m ago•0 comments

Media over QUIC Demo

https://hang.live/
1•simonpure•11m ago•0 comments

Sketchpad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad
1•tosh•12m ago•0 comments

Here's why all flyers should be worried if Spirit Airlines goes away (2025)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/17/business/spirit-airlines-air-fare-impact
2•thunderbong•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: CADBench – every AI CAD tool I tested fails on basic mechanical parts

https://evals-for-ai-cads.vercel.app/
1•ryanrana•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Local AI search for your video library (local, open source)

https://edit-mind.com
1•iliashad•23m ago•1 comments

Kill your onboarding: selling to 10k new users a day

https://twitter.com/Railway/status/2052522801693958460
1•yakkomajuri•24m ago•0 comments

Shadowrun Boston Unlocked

https://hooby.blog/posts/shadowrun-boston-unlocked/
2•hooby•27m ago•1 comments

Occupations with the Highest Divorce Rates

https://flowingdata.com/2026/05/07/divorce-and-occupation-2026/
2•Willingham•30m ago•0 comments

devrage: Count how many times you swear at coding agents

https://www.npmjs.com/package/devrage
2•yakkomajuri•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cable Detective

https://apps.apple.com/at/app/cable-detective/id6765963737?mt=12
1•franze•34m ago•0 comments

Record Handling (1966) [pdf]

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/k-9-pdf/k-9-u2293-Re...
1•tosh•38m ago•0 comments

Internet Archive Switzerland

https://internetarchive.ch/
32•hggh•40m ago•9 comments

20 years after the BBC mix-Up, Guy Goma's story becomes a book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO0kaSHAOSE
1•heldrida•40m ago•0 comments

The Atari 800 – By Paul Lefebvre

https://www.goto10retro.com/p/inside-the-atari-800
3•rbanffy•41m ago•0 comments

No Dumb Questions: What is an MCP server and why do I care?

https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/05/08/no-dumb-questions-mcp/
2•mc-serious•43m ago•0 comments

Mouse Wheel Tweaks

https://mcpedl.com/mouse-wheel-tweaks/
1•davimedeiros•44m ago•0 comments

What if there was no BASIC in EndBASIC? – by Julio Merino

https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/no-basic-in-endbasic
4•rbanffy•45m ago•0 comments

Evaluating Geekbench 6 – By Chester Lam

https://chipsandcheese.com/p/evaluating-geekbench-6
1•rbanffy•46m ago•0 comments

Breaking Jolt's Verifier with an Unbound Uni-Skip Claim

https://blog.zksecurity.xyz/posts/jolt-uniskip-bug/
1•baby•46m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What is the underlying stack behind multi-agent platforms?

2•throwaw12•51m ago•0 comments

Show HN: nocal is a calendar that turns your week into a workspace

https://nocal.app/
1•bcmuse•52m ago•0 comments

Simplex Algorithm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_algorithm
1•tosh•53m ago•0 comments

Capacity

https://dahl.dev/capacity
2•aleda145•55m ago•0 comments

Another Israeli terrorist attacking a school

https://twitter.com/swilkinsonbc/status/2052752104817603002
6•juliusceasar•1h ago•3 comments

Forking the Web

https://dillo-browser.org/lab/web-fork/
11•wrxd•1h ago•2 comments