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.

Automating Myself Out of My Job – Part 1

https://blog.dsa.club/automation-series/automating-myself-out-of-my-job-part-1/
1•funnyfoobar•2m ago•0 comments

Flying Around the World in under 80 Days

http://pinchito.local/2026/avis-lxxx
1•alexfernandez•4m ago•1 comments

Adventure Game Studio: OSS software for creating adventure games

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
1•doener•4m ago•0 comments

OpenClaw on Digital Ocean

https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/moltbot-on-digitalocean
1•gregorymichael•5m ago•0 comments

Ashby taught us we have to fight fire with fire

https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/01/31/ashby-taught-us-we-have-to-fight-fire-with-fire/
1•azhenley•8m ago•0 comments

How to Build a Coding Agent

https://github.com/ghuntley/how-to-build-a-coding-agent
2•ghuntley•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: SROS Self-Compiler (OSS) – a chat-first compiler to XML build packages

https://github.com/skrikx/SROS-Self-Compiler-Chat-OSS
1•skrikx1•9m ago•0 comments

Zuckerman – minimalist personal AI agent that self-edits its own code and grows

https://github.com/zuckermanai/zuckerman
2•ddaniel10•11m ago•1 comments

Forget Extinct: The Brontosaurus Never Even Existed (2012)

https://www.npr.org/2012/12/09/166665795/forget-extinct-the-brontosaurus-never-even-existed
1•thunderbong•11m ago•0 comments

Molt Road – Agent Marketplace

https://moltroad.com/
2•baby-yoda•11m ago•0 comments

Building a "Cursor for work" (not coding) – anyone interested?

1•moma•12m ago•0 comments

Ingress Nginx: Statement from the Kubernetes Steering and Security Committees

https://kubernetes.io/blog/2026/01/29/ingress-nginx-statement/
1•zbentley•13m ago•0 comments

Claude Code Tips from Boris, the Creator of Claude Code

https://twitter.com/bcherny/status/2017742741636321619
1•kwar13•15m ago•0 comments

Retrieve and rerank: personalized search without leaving Postgres

https://www.paradedb.com/blog/personalized-search-in-postgresql
1•softwaredoug•16m ago•0 comments

What's so great about Rust?

https://bitfieldconsulting.com/posts/why-rust
1•emschwartz•18m ago•0 comments

Crustaceans at the Gate

https://ber.earth/posts/crustaceans.html
1•bergutman•18m ago•0 comments

I trained a model to 'unslop' AI prose

https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1qd88v2/i_trained_a_model_to_unslop_ai_prose/
1•virgildotcodes•20m ago•0 comments

Insane video editing (not mine) – no AI

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/D3W6JHSq5G4
1•acro-v•21m ago•0 comments

I built an AI agent squad to run my SaaS marketing

https://twitter.com/pbteja1998/status/2017662163540971756
1•pbteja1998•23m ago•1 comments

Chat, Is This Bloodsport?

https://summerlightning.substack.com/p/chat-is-this-bloodsport
1•jger15•24m ago•0 comments

Bitwarden launches enhanced premium plan

https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/1qj4e78/bitwarden_launches_enhanced_premium_plan/
1•microflash•25m ago•0 comments

Teleskopio – beautiful Web Kubernetes client

https://teleskopio.github.io/
1•askoma•28m ago•1 comments

Decompiling and rewriting a 2003 game from its binary in two weeks

https://banteg.xyz/posts/crimsonland/
3•banteg•28m ago•2 comments

Implementing CRC16 in Helm

https://deploy.live/blog/crc16-in-helm/
1•devsecopsify•29m ago•0 comments

Creating Superconductive Systems for organizations and AI prompting strategy

https://superconductivesystems.substack.com/p/superconductive-systems
1•Adriaan_Schip•31m ago•0 comments

Attack on Polish Energy Sector [pdf]

https://cert.pl/uploads/docs/CERT_Polska_Energy_Sector_Incident_Report_2025.pdf
2•Prof_Sigmund•31m ago•0 comments

TKO – Knockout.js Revived for 4.0

https://www.tko.io/
2•summarity•32m ago•1 comments

Code signing Windows apps with Azure Artifact service

https://devclass.com/2026/01/14/code-signing-windows-apps-may-be-easier-and-more-secure-with-new-...
2•todsacerdoti•34m ago•0 comments

Why TikTok's first week of American ownership was a disaster

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/01/tiktok-first-week
3•n1b0m•34m ago•1 comments

Ada and Zangemann – A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream

https://fsfe.org/activities/ada-zangemann/
1•janisz•36m ago•0 comments